


Looking for Something to Do

by arthm



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Nico, M/M, Meddling Gods, Mystery, Quests, Sarcasm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-07-07 21:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 28,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15916146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthm/pseuds/arthm
Summary: Nico is bored. Very bored. So much so that it's starting to get on Will's nerves. So he tries to get Nico to interest himself in something. This may have been a mistake.Set after BoO, but without reference to ToA.





	1. How to Entertain a Demigod

**Author's Note:**

> Hi - this is a cross-post of a story I started on ff.net quite a while ago. I've come to prefer this site now, and intend to clean things up, and get it finished now I'm on here.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it, and I welcome any comments and suggestions for improvement!

“Will? I’m bored.”

Will looked up from the grass at Nico, who was sitting, cross-legged, on a tree-stump overlooking the lake. He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

If there was one thing he now knew about Nico, it was that he was kind-of, well, needy. Not needy in a particularly narcissistic way, no. Nor did he necessarily know that he was being so – there was no other word for it – needy. Not that it wasn’t quite nice that Nico now acknowledged needing things from people. And knew that other people were happy to help. And, true, it was especially nice that when Nico needed things, he usually needed them from him – that he, in fact, needed _him._ A need reciprocated, indeed. But, in this case, this constant need for novelty – again, it was endearing, cute, _nice,_ and Will even liked it in Nico, but…

Just not necessarily all the time.

He was a healer, he had deep wells of care inside of him, and Nico was entitled to every drop. And he never begrudged Nico anything – nor, he suspected, did Nico do likewise with him. But it did, just now and then, and just on this one particular subject, get – sorry, Nico – a little _wearing._ It was this plaintive cry of ‘boredom’ that got to Will. Not because of the thing in itself (who didn’t get bored?), or its frequency (though Nico did bring it up quite a lot), but because Will simply didn’t know what to do about it.

And that kind-of needled at him.

(And what was with the proliferation of ‘n’ alliteration when he was near – next-to – _around_ – Nico?)

“Sunshine?”

It was, Will supposed, understandable. After all, when you’d had a pretty big part in saving (and – sorry again, Nico – occasionally endangering) the world between your eleventh and fifteenth birthdays, anything else would seem pretty flat. And everything else that had happened along the way. You’d think he’d be relieved. Relaxed, even. He didn’t have to deal with any of that stuff anymore. Well, for however long ‘anymore’ lasted, at least. That really wasn’t Nico, though. It was true that there had been a brief honeymoon period after the last battle at the camp, but that was finished, its ending coinciding with the end of summer and the departure of most of the campers. Even Percy and Annabeth had left. So here Nico was, as the autumn leaves browned and dropped from the trees, with nothing to do.

“Will!”

“Huh?” Will blinked at Nico. “What’s up?”

“You’ve got a thoughtful look on your face. It’s weird.”

Will flashed a grin. “Am I not allowed to ponder, Death Boy?”

“No.” Nico smirked. “You haven’t the right facilities for it.”

“And what’s _that_ meant to mean?” huffed Will.

“Nothing, nothing…” Nico’s lips twitched. “Anyway, back to the important point. Me. Bored.”

“Time would pass faster if you used verbs,” said Will sweetly.

Nico gave him a sidelong look, which seemed to send a small shadow with it. It vanished the instant that Nico playfully stuck out his tongue. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Will pulled himself into a sitting position, and swivelled so that he was leaning against the tree trunk. He twisted his head up and around, and batted his eyelashes. “Am I not entertaining enough for you?”

Nico laughed – always, Will thought, a thing rare, unused, and rather prone to sounding weird. This one was no exception. Even Nico looked a little surprised at it.

“I could tell you jokes…?” suggested Will. “Have you ever heard the one about the satyr –”

“Yes,” said Nico, his voice flat. “Percy’s told me all the jokes about Grover.”

“Not _all_ jokes about satyrs are jokes about Grover,” pointed out Will.

Now it was Nico’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Will didn’t hold out for long:

“OK, OK, maybe they _are_ all about Grover!”

Nico smiled for a moment, and then went back to being thoughtful.

“What are you good at?” asked Will.

Nico’s expression soured. He counted on his fingers: “Killing things – usually monsters. Fighting. Attracting monsters. Moping. Travelling around the worlds. All of them. Creeping people out. Fighting, again.”

“There’s always training.”

Nico made a derisive snort. “Against who? Without Percy here I beat everyone flat. As I think I’ve said: boring.”

“What do you like, then?” offered Will.

Nico pursed his lips. “You.” He blushed. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist the opportunity to be cheesy.”

Will barked a laugh. “Come on, Necro, I’m trying to help you here.”

“It’s OK for you. You like making people better. You’re good at it. You’ve got your infirmary. That keeps you busy. And by the way – ‘Necro’?”

Will shrugged and smiled. “Why not? As for the Infirmary, hardly anyone comes in in the winter, and even then it’s usually just for a cold, and there’s not that much that can be done about those.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. No real need to, either. Your immune system just has to do its job. I can supply pocket-handkerchiefs, and that’s about it.”

“Even so,” continued Nico, “you’ve still got paperwork –”

Will rolled his eyes. “Yeah. _Paper_ work –”

“– I know you like it!”

Will blushed. “Maybe a bit…”

“A-ha!” Nico messed his hand through Will’s hair. “You can’t lie to me!” He deepened his voice. “I can see into your soul.”

Will puffed his hair away from his face. The lack of decent hair-cuts was one of the – admittedly not that many – annoying things about Aphrodite’s kids being so unattractive to monsters, and so going home, he mused.

“You could do that,” he suggested.

“What, cut hair?” said Nico, sceptical.

Will stared at him. “Did you –”

“Read your mind?” Nico grinned. “No. But I’ve seen that expression on your face before, Sunshine. You’re predictably vain.”

“Well, then,” said Will, pouting, “I _meant_ going down and asking your dad for a holiday-job. He’s always complaining about the queues.”

“As a judge of the dead?” Nico pulled a face. “No thank you!” He affectionately rubbed the toe of his trainer against Will’s shoulder. “Besides, what about you?”

“I could help?”

 _“You?_ It would be a disaster! You’d believe every sob-story. Let everyone off!”

“Well, no – maybe – would that be so bad?”

“Yes! What about justice?”

“What about mercy?” shot back Will, a smug grin pulling at his mouth.

Nico stared at him for a moment in silent thought. “Shut up.”

“Ha! I knew I’d get you!”

“You know,” said Nico coolly, “if you spent the winter in the Underworld, you’d come out as pale as me…”

Will made a face of feigned terror. “No!” He cracked into a smile. “There’s always spray-on tan.”

Nico laughed again – one more normal this time, Will thought. It had warmed up, maybe. From the dwindling rays of the October sun. Or probably just he’d had a practice go a few minutes earlier.

“No,” said Nico, absently picking up a stray pebble, weighing it in his hand, and attempting to skim it across the lake. It dropped under the water with a splash. “The Underworld is not an option.”

“Well, what, then?” asked Will. “We live, it seems, for once, in unheroic times.” He, too, went to skim a stone. It bounced once, twice – splash.

“I’m superfluous to requirements,” sighed Nico. One, two, three – _splash._

“Exactly.” _Splash._ (After three.)

“Ah, well, maybe something will turn up.” (One, two, three, four, fi – _splash)_ “Or I can improve my canasta game.”

“Canasta?”

“It’s what Chiron and Mr D. play, right?”

“No, Pinochle.” (Five. _Splash.)_

“That’s not the same?” (Five – almost hit a Naiad… _Splash)_

“Definitely not.” (Six!) “Uh, we don’t want to upset the water nymphs, Nico.”

“Just because you’re winning!” (Six – _splash.)_

“There is no ‘winning’. But that –” _Splash_ “– is seven. Beat that.” Will beamed up at Nico.

Not taking his eyes off Will, Nico nonchalantly flicked his wrist. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven –

“Ouch!” cried Will, rubbing the back of his head. The wet stone tumbled to the ground behind him. “You shadow-travelled that – cheat!”

Nico attempted an innocent expression. It didn’t really work. “Me…?”

“Yes, Death Boy – you.” With that, Will’s hand shot out and grabbed Nico’s ankle. With a deft movement, he pulled him off the tree-stump. Nico fell on top of Will, laughing – an embarrassingly snorty one, too. But Will didn’t really have time to focus on that, as he’d rather underestimated the momentum created by Nico’s movement. Off-balance, the pair of them rolled, helpless, down the bank –

“No – Will! –”

“Nico – Stop!”

_Splash._

* * *

 

Nico would have happily lain there in the shallows with his boyfriend for ages, but Will, almost instantly on touching the water, had sprung shrieking into the air.

“Gods, that’s _freezing!”_

Nico eyed Will, standing, dripping, on the bank. “Is it?”

“Yes! Come out of there! You’ll catch a cold, and then I’ll have to –”

“Be unable to do anything about it?”

Will thought for a moment. “Oh. Yeah. So – all the more reason! Out!”

Grinning, Nico got up and walked out of the water. He put his arm around Will’s waist, ignoring the wet squelchiness of the feeling. “You know that that was all your fault, right?” he said, as they walked back to the cabins.

“Well, you said you were bored.”

Nico laughed and then kissed Will. “I was really talking about a more permanent state of being…”

Will shrugged. “It was a start, I guess. Now –” (here they stopped outside Nico’s cabin) “– get dry, and I’ll see you later, OK?”

Nico squeezed Will’s hands. “Sooner even than that, Sunshine.”

The door closed, and Will padded back to his own cabin. Nico’s boredom was going to require some serious thought.


	2. Educating Nico

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is mostly just jokes and references to things. No actual prize for guessing them all, but have a go anyway...

“What’s up, Doc?”

In retrospect, the holding stage of Project Find-Nico-Something-To-Do had slightly backfired.

Will had thought it a kind act to introduce Nico to the childhood that he should have had – or that he had had, but had forgotten about. It had worked, in a way. He’d started by assigning Nico cartoons. Safe, uncontroversial (saving the changing social values between then and now), fun cartoons. He should have known that this would have happened. That Nico would be constantly quoting lines at him. In some cases, lines from films even _Will_ was unfamiliar with (not that Nico’s opening line was one that Will was unfamiliar with – that one, after all, was famous). And he was a big fan of film. Nico, he supposed, always was something of a – a collector. Of cards, grudges, and, now, movie quotes.

He sent a slightly grumpy thought towards his dad. He wasn’t asking for prophecy – just a little foresight… Or maybe that should be ‘common sense’. Not, he’d heard, one of his dad’s gifts. Oh, well.

“Stocktaking,” he said, bluntly.

“Oh.” Nico started to sidle away. “See you around, then.”

“Stop.”

Nico stopped.

Will got up from the stool and turned the sheaf of paper towards Nico.

“Sit.”

Nico sat.

“Right. So, I’m going to go into the store-cupboard and call out how much we’ve got of each thing. This should speed thing up.”

“And I’m helping you why…?”

“Because you are an obedient little bunny wabbit.”

Nico went to reply, realised that, right here, right now, it was probably true, shrugged, and picked up the pencil. “Fine. But this is a one-off, OK? Good. So, gloves?”

“Four boxes.”

“Masks?”

* * *

 

“Not bad, Amy. That’s a real improvement, but you’ve got to keep practising your scales.” As he spoke, Will ran his fingers smoothly up and down the strings, picking out a succession of crisp, evenly-spaced notes. “Once you’ve got a good grasp of the technique, then you can learn to play almost anything.”

The grey eyed girl nodded.

“You promise?”

She grinned. “Promise.” She packed away the instrument and stood up. “Thanks, Will. See you next week?”

Will mentally checked his calendar. “Yeah. But Wednesday, not Tuesday, OK?”

“Fine. It’s not like I’m that busy outside of the summer. No-one is.” She opened the door and smiled. “Isn’t it so relaxing?”

Will nodded, but she’d already gone. Absent-mindedly, he plucked at the strings, pulling out a tune that he half-remembered from somewhere. With other, more musically inclined, members of cabin seven off home, Will was taking the music lessons of those remaining campers who wanted them. He wasn’t quite as bad as some of his siblings would claim. Well, most of music was a willingness to have a go, wasn’t it?

Focusing on the music gave him room in his head to think about what to do with Nico. He could teach him to play, he supposed, but he didn’t see that as a long-term solution. Nico needed a purpose in life; unfortunately he’d been born with abilities more appropriate to a purpose in death.

Nico – Nico needed a quest. Not necessarily one with a capital ‘Q’, but some kind of quest nonetheless. In fact, not one with a ‘Q’ at all: for with one of those, like he’d had before, he would only end up in the same state. Needing to be a hero when no hero was needed.

Hmm. Will felt like he was repeating himself. And he was still no closer to an answer. Though, he thought, with a small gesture towards optimism, he reckoned he’d identified the problem. He thought he had, anyway.

It was a moment or two before he realised that he’d finished playing quite some time ago. It was a few moments after that that he noticed the narrow shadow falling over him.

He refocused his eyes and looked towards the door.

“Play it, Sam,” said Nico.

“Again?” smiled Will. “For old times’ sake, then.” He plucked at the strings, just as he had been doing before. With Nico watching, and the fact that he was really concentrating on it, he didn’t feel that it flowed quite as naturally. He frowned at his fingers.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you play that thing before,” said Nico as Will (fumbling a little) got to the end of the song.

“Well, on this evidence, it’s not like you’d really want to…”

“Lyre.”

Will put the instrument down and gave Nico a disbelieving look. Then he groaned. “Even your jokes are resurrected, Death Boy.”

“I can’t help it, Sunshine. I’m just a comedy miracle worker.”

“Oh, there’s definitely something abnormal about it…” muttered Will.

“Cheek. And there was me going to invite you to lunch.” With that, Nico stepped out of the doorway. Sunlight flooded into the practice room.

Abandoning the lyre, Will rushed after him. “Nico!”

Outside, Nico was nowhere to be seen. Will frowned. He’d shadow-travelled, hadn’t he?

Rolling his eyes at his boyfriend’s pettiness, Will turned around. It was then he saw Nico, his back against the wall on one side of the door. In his rush, Will had run right past him…

Nico grinned and tipped an imaginary hat. “Here’s looking at you, kid!”

* * *

 

“Is he _still_ watching that film?” asked Jason, incredulous.

Will speared a sausage and started to eat it like a lollipop. “It’s _Gone with the Wind_. It’s a long film.”

“And you’re letting him skip dinner to watch it?”

Will shrugged. “He’ll be done before the end of dinner. If not then I’ll take him back something.”

“I’m getting worried about you, you know.”

“What? Me?” Will blinked in surprise.

“Mmm.” Jason swallowed, and wiped a bit of gravy from the side of his mouth. Piper, had she not gone home, would not have been impressed. “You’re not concerned about his health. That means there’s something wrong with _you_.” He thought. “In fact, more than that, you’re _encouraging_ him to spend all his time watching movies! What’s up with that?”

Will looked around. No Nico. He leaned forwards. “I am worried about him, but not for that reason. He just seems – well, in his own words – bored.”

“Bored?”

“Yep. Not in a ‘this-is-boring’ way, but just the sense that he is, at heart, bored with his life.”

“Ah,” said Jason, knowledgably. “That’s not boredom. That’s existential ennui.”

Will gave him an unimpressed look. “Just because those little glasses make you _look_ smart, Grace, it doesn’t mean that you actually _are_ , nor give you a licence to casually drop authoritative phrases like that.”

Jason smiled. “Worth a try. But I’ve got experience here. Like me, he doesn’t know what he’s meant to do now, but, unlike me, he’s not fine with not knowing that.”

“So I am, for the moment, distracting him until I can work out a better solution.”

“And to do that, you’ve plonked him down in front of a TV screen?”

Will grinned wryly. “That’s the quintessential modern all-American childhood that he missed out on, isn’t it?”

“That cynicism of his is really starting rub off on you, Solace. It’s disturbing.” Jason took a drink. “You’ll regret this.”

“I kind-of do already… He won’t stop making references to the films.”

“At least he’s still on the classics. You’d better be prepared for when he starts watching some of those really cheesy movie musicals. Or really anything made after about 1962.”

“Why ’62?”

“ _Lawrence of Arabia_.”

“Oh, yeah. Good film. I’ll be sure to get Nico to watch it.”

“That’s another one that’ll occupy him for hours,” pointed out Jason.

“Mmm. Who was he the son of?”

“Athena.” Jason stared into the distance. “Pretty much the archetypal version: soldier and medieval historian.”

“Is it me, or are demigods getting younger?”

Jason looked at Will, perplexed. This rapidly turned into a slightly cocky air, eerily reminiscent of Percy. “Is it my boyish charm?”

“You’re no older than me,” pointed out Will. “And, no, that’s not what I meant at all. You notice that all the famous demigods of history are adults?”

“Well, how much of history is about children?”

“Very little. But why is most of the present demigod-ing being done by kids?”

Jason shrugged. “Fewer commitments? Imagine doing this, paying your taxes, and raising a family… Or do we just smell less as adults? I don’t know. I imagine there’s a reason.”

“Yeah. I guess so –”

Will jumped as he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, there you are, Nico!” He reached up and put his fingers on top of Nico’s.

Nico nodded, squeezed Will’s shoulder, and sat down next to him. He rubbed his eyes. “That film was so _long_. And a bit inaccurate.”

“Not enough hell-hounds?” put in Jason.

“Not enough hell-hounds,” agreed Nico.

“I’m afraid you’re too late for anything but pudding,” said Will. He gestured to the materialising ice-cream in front of him apologetically.

Nico looked at it for a moment, and then smiled to himself. He lifted an eyebrow. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn…”

Will lowered his head slowly to the table, not noticing as his hair drifted into some spilt cream. He had no thoughts at all, only an overwhelming desire not to feel anything ever again…


	3. Know Thyself (and Thy Pinochle Player)

Will didn’t understand how this game worked. Neither, at the start, had Nico, and, as a team, they’d been pretty comprehensively beaten by Chiron and Mr D. Then in the second game Nico seemed to be getting the hang of it, and they weren’t beaten by quite so much. Now, to his great surprise, they were actually winning. And this despite Will’s markedly shallower learning curve.

Mr D. grinned as he put down his cards. Two Jacks of Diamonds and two Queens of Spades. “Double Pinochle,” he said, smugly. “So, 300 points.”

Nico looked across the table at him coolly. “Oh.”

Mr D.’s grin widened.

“And there’s me,” said Nico sadly, “with only two marriages – Clubs were the trump suit, right? – in Trump.” He put down two Kings and Queens of Clubs.

“That’s only 80,” smirked Mr D. “So, Mike, looks like you lo –”

“To which I’ll add – because I hadn’t actually finished yet –” continued Nico, his voice and face expressionless, “two Aces, two Jacks, and two Tens. All Trump, of course.”

Chiron smiled. “A Double Run. How rare.”

“1500 points?” inquired Nico, all innocently naïve.

Will considered laughing at Nico’s matter-of-fact humbling of Mr D. Then he caught sight of Mr D.’s expression, and quickly reconsidered.

Chiron laughed ruefully and nodded, tallying up the points. “And that puts Nico and Will conclusively in the lead. Game over.” He smiled at Nico and Will. “Well done.”

Will bent his head and waited for the explosion. Out in the fields, the strawberry plants cowered.

There was a small hiss of air, and then nothing. Will looked up. Mr D. was slumped back in his chair, deflated. “Fine…”

Then a new force seemed to possess him and, his eyes glinting, he sat forwards. “A new game!” he cried. He looked positively intrigued by Nico. “But this time,” he said, gesturing to Will and Chiron – Will’s chair slid across the veranda – “one-on-one. Without the dead weight on either side.”

Will and Chiron watched for a while, occasionally exchanging amused glances. It was quite close, but Will suspected, from Mr D.’s increasing irritation, that Nico was in the lead again.

Chiron put his hand to Will’s arm. “I think we’d better go.”

Will glanced at the intense pair of faces. “Yeah. They’ll probably be a while.” He walked to the end of the wooden boards, Chiron ahead of him, and then hesitated. He looked back. “He won’t –”

“Hurt him? Mr D. wouldn’t dare – and besides, a lot of that is just an attitude. Besides, I’ve beaten him often. He gets over it.”

“Oh, no,” smiled Will. “I was more worried about Nico doing something. He gets quite competitive…”

* * *

 

“I think they’re playing a different game now,” said Will, as they came down from the strawberries, and he peered across the shallow dip to at the Big House.

Chiron shielded his eyes with a hand. “Looks like … poker?”

Will laughed. “He’ll get nowhere. Nico spent decades in a casino.” He popped a stolen strawberry into his mouth.

“And, from what you know of Mr D., you think he’s not spent even longer?”

“True. But how long have you been playing Pinochle? Uh, Chiron – why are we at the Archery Range?”

“Practice.” Chiron handed Will a bow.

“Um. Really? You know we’ve tried –”

“You might be proud. It’s not many that can hit a dryad.”

“Especially if they’re not aiming in the other direction. I’m an embarrassment to the cabin. They don’t say anything, but I know they find it funny. And –” He winced and rubbed his back at the memory. “– I really don’t want to hit any more dryads. It wasn’t as if they didn’t already hold a grudge against Apollo.”

“Well, Will, there’s no-one else here, so, as your camp Activities’ Director, I’m directing your activity. And while you try to hit that fairly big target over there,” (here Chiron lifted Will’s arms and pointed him at the end of the range) “you can tell me what the problem is.”

Will’s head snapped around from reluctantly eyeing the straw target. “Problem? What problem?”

“The one where you think it’s your purpose to find Nico his purpose.”

“I – Ow! –” The string snapped forwards, twanging off Will’s cheek. He scowled. “This is what this is for. A comic background event for our conversation.” He paused, took a breath, and fired an arrow. It got about two thirds of the way. “How did you know?”

“I’ve lived a long time. I’ve trained a lot of heroes. Nico’s in the classic condition of a hero – he can’t imagine a time when he isn’t saving someone or something. And you act as if you’re responsible for relieving that.”

Will sighed. “Yeah. You’re right.” He fired another arrow.

“Better, Will. Try not to flinch away from the string. I suppose it wouldn’t help if I told you that it wasn’t your responsibility?”

Will smiled ruefully. “No, I don’t think it would. You could send him on a Quest, though. That would help. Something drawn-out. Build a tower of sand. Walk to Chile.”

“I can’t give him a Quest without a request from the Gods, or a prophecy. And besides – straighten up a little – aren’t all those a little pointless? A waste of his time?”

“You could fake a request,” suggested Will. “I – I’m the son of Apollo, I bet if I prayed really hard I could will up a prophecy. You –”

“I’ll do no such thing. It’s you that wants this for him; really _you_ want to be the one to make the quest.”

“What, so you reckon I think that’s it’s my place to give him a quest? Send him off into the world on my command?”

“Precisely. You can even give him a handkerchief as a token of your love, and he can do valiant and chivalric deeds.”

Will rolled his eyes at Chiron sarcasm – was Nico rubbing off on _everyone?_ – and let fly another arrow. This one stuck into the outer ring. “There are several reasons why that’s not going to happen. One: we’re not currently stuck in some mediaeval Romance. Nico is not a knight; nor, I’ll thank you, am I his _lady_. Two: he only does what I say when he’s particularly tired or preoccupied. Three: I can’t think of anything that I want him to do. Four: he’d think that was stupid. Five: I don’t have any handkerchiefs. Six: I don’t want to do any of that!”

“But you do think that _he_ wants you to. You think that he expects you to give him a meaning to his life.”

“I – I – Do I?” Will blinked. Did he?

Chiron shrugged. “Nico doesn’t expect you to do that for him. The most, I think, he expects from you is to be with him as he tries to find his purpose.”

Will pulled back the string, bit his lip, and then released. The arrow stuck quite close to the middle of the target. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, dubious. “But I still feel like I have to help him.”

“I don’t doubt it. And I don’t expect you to stop feeling like that. But don’t let it be a burden on you. It’s the last thing that either of you need.” Chiron clapped his hands together. “That’s enough of me being ‘wise’ for one day – and I think we’ll leave the archery on that moderate success.”

Will put the bow down with visible relief. He massaged the muscles in his arm. “Shall we go back to our gambler friends?” 

* * *

 

“What do you think they’re playing now?” mused Will as they made their way back to the Big House.

“Oh, Mr D. likes something with a degree of style. Baccarat. Two-handed Bridge.”

“ _SNAP!”_ burst out Nico’s voice.

“Or Snap…” Chiron conceded.

Will blushed. “That might have been Nico’s suggestion.”

Chiron laugh ended abruptly when he reached the card table and noticed the large (untouched) wine-glass of deep red liquid next to Nico. His eyes narrowed and he glared, in a true teacher-ly way, more in disappointment than anger, at the paunchy god.

“Are you seriously willing to get a camper _drunk_ – breaking all your restrictions and responsibilities –in order to win a game of cards?”

“It’s OK, I asked him for it,” said Nico, looking up. “It’s just pomegranate juice. See.” They watched as he picked up the glass and downed the drink.

Nico blinked, coughed, and his normally pale forehead flushed bright red. When he next spoke, his voice was unusually high. “OK… So not _just_ pomegranate juice, then.” Then, to Will’s great shock, Nico giggled. Yes, actually giggled. Gods, how strong had that drink been?

Mr D. wouldn’t meet Chiron’s eyes. Will was sure that he heard him mutter something about demigods being lightweights.

“Probably time that you two were getting going,” said Chiron. He’d taken the glass from Nico and was now holding it very tightly indeed. So much so that Will was quite worried that it would shatter.

“Really?” said Nico. “But we were –”

“On our way!” said Will, pulling at Nico’s jumper. He really didn’t want to see Chiron get angry. It would ruin the friendly, kindly image he had of him. Seeing Mr D. trampled by his hooves would not sustain that. But, then again, wasn't it a bit of an over-reaction to getting Nico lightly - maybe a bit more than lightly - drunk? Though, he supposed, Mr. D. was still on that restriction, and who knew how seriously they took things like that.

Nico got to his feet (on the second attempt). “See you next time!” he said brightly, before following Will off the veranda, which he achieved by entirely misjudging the position of the steps, and falling straight to the ground. Will didn’t like Mr D. that much, but he hoped for his sake that Nico’s dad never found out about this…

“Oops. Help?”

Will gave him a hand up. “Arise, Sir Nico,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a plot. Honest.


	4. Nico takes a Bus Ride (I)

“Ever done a pick-up run before, Nico?”

“Not above ground, no.”

“You’ll enjoy it. Bring a new face into camp.”

“Ruin someone else’s life.”

Will tipped his head from side to side. “I think you could probably lay the blame for that on whoever their parent was. Is.”

“Do we not know?” asked Nico as they passed the pine tree.

“Not yet. Probably Ares or Hermes. They have a lot of kids.”

Nico nudged Will. “So does Apollo.”

“True. It’s kind-of embarrassing, really.”

“And why are we walking out of camp? I could just shadow-travel us there and back.”

“And terrify the poor thing by forcing it through a vortex of darkness?”

“It’s not _that_ bad.”

“You’re used to it – not everyone handles it as well as you.”

“And by ‘not everyone’, you mean _you_.”

Will blushed. “Maybe…” He drew himself up. “And maybe this new kid is just the same!”

“So we’re walking there, are we? I hope this isn’t an urgent mission.”

“No. We’re taking the bus. It’s not far.”

“The _bus_? Have the Grey Sisters upscaled their operation, or is there some immortal bus company?”

“No,” said Will, pulling out a sheet of paper in Chiron’s handwriting.

“Or is your dad taking us?” Nico’s eyes lit up. “Because it would be really, really-so-cool-if –

Will laughed. “No, Nico, calm down. He’s not taking us.”

“Then what bus?”

They turned left at the end of the road. “The 282.” There was a bus-stop post. Will checked the laminated timetable. “It should be here in a couple of minutes.”

Nico raised his eyebrows. “We’re genuinely going by a regular, mortal, public bus?”

“Yep. Chiron’s on a cost-cutting drive after the expense of the war.”

Nico wrinkled his nose. “You realise that I’ve got a car?

Will grinned. “Demeter’s pushing the environmental angle. And she’s not wrong. Besides, if shadow-travelling was bad, imagine showing up for this with your undead chauffeur.”

Nico sniffed. “At least it would show a bit of class. Rather than us just tumbling off at the nearest bus-stop, clutching our ‘Super Saver Day-Returns’.”

“Don’t be a snob, Death Boy.”

“But what if there’s an emergency? Are you sure that we shouldn’t be in more of a hurry to collect this kid?”

“It’s fine. The kid’s only just been detected as accidentally, and probably unknowingly, using their powers. No monsters anywhere near, Chiron says. But better to be safe than not. You probably won’t even need that thing.” Will tapped Nico’s sword, which was dangling from a belt hook. Now that they were in the mortal world, it was taking a significant effort not to see it as just a black Swiss Army knife. Will looked along the road. “And here’s the bus!” He stuck his arm out.

Nico squinted at it. “It’s really busy – I don’t think there are any seats left. So that’s that –”

“We can stand. It’ll only be about 20 minutes.”

Nico scowled. “No! There I draw the line. I won’t be squashed up against someone in one of those over-filled vehicles, swinging about at every corner and bump. I’m Lord of the Shadows, Prince of the Underworld, the Ghost King –”

“And Emperor of Misplaced Outrage. Yeah, yeah.” The bus stopped. Will put some money – dollars –into Nico’s hand. “Now, get on the bus and ask the nice man for two return tickets.”

“Oh, you think you’re coming back, do you?” said Nico. Will rolled his eyes and pressed Nico forwards, onto the bus.

* * *

 

The bus lurched over another speed-bump. Will lost his grip on the ceiling-strap and staggered down the gangway. Nico caught him by the wrist and hauled him back.

“ _You’re_ the one who wanted to go on this thing,” he sighed. “Now, hold on properly.”

“I’d hold on better if you held it with me…” said Will, wiggling his eyebrows.

Nico went scarlet. “Not here!” he whispered. “There are – _other people_.”

Will looked around at the ‘other people’. Some of them were reading newspapers. Some were staring out of the window. One was trying to soothe a little child on her shoulder. About three rows back there were two women holding hands over a bag of shopping. “They don’t care, Nico.”

“Well, I do, OK? They might not care, but they might remember – and we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Even this little whispered argument is a bit too much for my liking.”

Will shrugged. “Fine.” He grabbed the strap again. He checked his watch. “Not far now.” He paused. “I’ve got a confession to make.”

“Is it about how you ate my last cookie?” With his free hand Nico batted Will over the head. “The one I was _saving?_ Because I know about that.”

“You did? Sorry…” Will tried to look suitably ashamed. But it had been so tasty… “No, it’s not about that.”

“Well, it should have been. Because you know who I was saving it for?”

Will gave Nico a deadpan look. “Percy?”

Nico didn’t even deign to reply. “Well, then, Augustine, what is it?”

“It’s just that, well, ever since you told me you were bored, I’ve been trying to think of ways to stop it, and I think I might have been trying to organise your life for you. And I think that would have been wrong, especially without telling you. But, despite that, I’m not going to stop.”

“I thought you were doing something like that.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. When you started me on all those movies. That was seriously weird behaviour for you.” Nico smiled a little. “I don’t mind – frankly, I’m really quite flattered that it matters so much to you. But I would mind if you stopped living _your_ life because of me. OK, Sunshine? This is a ‘you-and-me’ deal, not a ‘you-living-to-keep-me-happy’ one. Don’t get obsessed.” Nico smirked. “I’m important, but not _that_ important.”

Will nodded. “Oh, you’re not? Well, that’s news!”

Nico snorted in amusement. At that moment, the bus jolted to a halt. This time it was Nico who fell forwards. His flailing hand closed over the next loop along – and over the hand already holding it.

Will look down at Nico and grinned. “That wasn’t too hard now, was it?”

Nico hesitated, and shook his head. “It’s not too bad.”

“But you’re going to have to let me go. This is our stop.”

* * *

 Will waved a cheery goodbye to the bus-driver as they hopped off the bus. He checked the timetable. “We’ve got 40 minutes before the next bus. Plenty of time.”

Nico winced. “ _Never_ say that…”

“What could possibly go wrong?”

“ _Or_ that!” Nico put his head in his hands. “We’re doomed now…”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” chided Will.

“I can’t help it!” Nico sighed. “What are we looking for, anyway?”

“A children’s home about half a block from here.” Will squinted up at the signs.

“Really? Another orphan?”

“Not technically, but yeah…” Will frowned slightly. “It makes it easier to take us to Camp Half-Blood, I suppose.” It was then that it occurred to him that he’d never told Nico about how he’d ended up at camp. Now wasn’t the time. He looked down at the yellow piece of paper in his hands. “St Dunstan’s.” He looked up at the red-brick building. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“It probably isn’t,” said Nico. “Not all demigods grow up surrounded by monsters.”

“Just those at Camp Half-Blood. Especially if they go near Cabin 13 before 10 in the morning.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “So, what’s the master plan? We walk in and abduct the kid? Do we even known their name?”

“Andy Tate,” read out Will. “And we can just ask for – him, I guess. They’re expecting him to be transferred to a new home.” He rummaged around in his jacket pocket. “Chiron’s got official papers and everything. But we have to give the kid ‘the talk’ first.”

“About the Greek gods?”

“And how they now only have sex with Americans.”

“A- _hem_.”

“Sorry, people _in_ America.”

“Better.” Nico frowned. “Why _is_ that?”

Will frowned. “Did you miss the bit about how ‘Classical Civilization’ moves in _your_ induction?”

“No, but why the geographical limitation? It’s not like that happened in the past.”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe only Americans can be heroes these days. But we can ponder that later. Let’s go freak out a twelve-year-old.”

* * *

 “So you and your little brother are the children of Greek gods? And so am I?”

“Yes. And he’s my little cousin, actually,” said Will, smiling slightly.

“I’m no-one’s little _anything_!” growled Nico. “Though,” he corrected himself, “he _is_ my cousin.” He thought. “Once removed.”

“Oh. OK. Whose daughter am I?” said the brown-haired girl. Andy was short for Andromeda. She was taking all this remarkably well, Will thought. He remembered totally freaking out.

“We don’t know yet,” said Nico, drumming his fingers on the bench outside the home, the girl’s single suitcase resting against his leg. “But you’ll find out soon enough when they claim you.”

“And when will that happen?”

“Before you’re 13.”

“Why?”

Nico glanced at Will. “That’s a long story.”

“And one, perhaps, for the bus back,” said Will, smiling kindly, but also tapping at his watch.

“You’re related to _gods_ and you came here by bus?”

“Told you,” said Nico to Will. “It lowers the tone of the mission.”

“But why are you here _now_?” asked the girl.

“To protect you,” said Will.

“From what?”

Nico looked around. “I’m not sure. Hopefully nothing. But we’re just making absolutely certain that you’re safe.”

“Um, Nico?”

“Yes, Will?”

“With all your Underworld experience, would you happen to know what _that_ is?”

Nico followed where Will was pointing.

A short distance along the road was a giant furry ant, about the size of a dog, and there were more pushing their way up from manhole covers all around them.

“Er… Not familiar.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...


	5. Nico takes a Bus Ride (II)

“You don’t know?”

Nico shook his head. “I’m not even sure that they’re technically monsters. In the Underworld-y sense. But, if you want a description, I’d be happy to go with ‘giant furry ants’. He unclipped his sword and weighed it in his hand.

Said ants moved forwards. Will turned to the girl, who, far from frightened, was actually _grinning_. “Just stay here on the bench, OK? We’ll protect you.” She nodded. Will turned back round to face the ants, and pulled a small knife out of his inside pocket. He shrugged at Nico’s unimpressed look. “It’s all I’ve got with me. Not all of us have fancy black swords that Daddy gave us.”

Nico didn’t reply, but instead stepped forwards and swung at the nearest ant. It disintegrated. “You take any that get past me.”

Will obligingly obeyed. Nico was quick with the sword, but he couldn’t get all of them as the streamed towards him. Luckily the increase in size seemed to make the ants less resilient than the ordinary kind, for it only took a stab with the knife to destroy them. The way they disintegrated (convenient, as usual, for the mess) made them seem awfully like monsters, despite Nico’s earlier –

Nico slapped his hand to his forehead. “ _Now_ I remember – Myrmekes!”

“Oh, well, then, that makes everything –” Will ducked down and skewered another ant “– all OK, then!”

There were a few more puffs of exploding ants – actually, almost all of them were gone now – before Will suddenly stopped and looked thoughtful. “As in Herodotus?”

“I – uh –” _(squish)_ “– guess so, yeah. I haven’t read it.”

“Hmm. I thought he made all that stuff up –”

“ _Will!_ ”

With Will not paying attention, he’d been tackled by an ant, and forced onto the ground. Its mandibles tightly pinching around his leg, it was dragging him away towards a nearby drain cover. He struggled, stabbing at it with his knife, but he couldn’t get the right angle to do anything more than lop off the end of a couple of its legs. This only made the ant angrier.

Skewering the last two ants in front of him in a single motion, Nico leapt over to Will. A black slash from the sword, and the ant was gone, leaving only the ragged bottom of Will’s right trouser-leg to show that it had existed at all.

Nico made a quick check to make sure that there were no more ants, before coming back to his injured boyfriend. Who wasn’t injured anymore.

“That’s quite a good healing trick, Sunshine,” said Nico. With a glance to see that Andy was preoccupied with the twitching of a dismembered ant’s leg, he kissed Will’s hand.

Will smiled weakly, and got to his feet. “Yeah, but what would I do without your ‘saving me’ trick?” He looked down at himself. He sighed. “And I liked these jeans…”

Nico eyed him thoughtfully. With a quick motion of his sword, he slashed the left leg.

Will stared at him. “What did you do that for?”

“Now they match.”

Will shook his head in resignation, and they went back to the bench.

“You guys do this a lot, do you?” asked Andy. She hadn’t moved, keeping her legs tucked in her arms.

“Oh, no,” said Will, trying to reassure the girl.

“Mmm,” agreed Nico. “This was actually a pretty light day.”

Will glared at him. Nico opened his mouth to reply; likely something about it better to be honest, but Andy spoke first:

“Cool! When do I get to do that?”

“Once you’re properly trained,” said Will.

“And how long does that take?”

“Ooh, _ages_ ,” said Nico. “Ten, maybe even twenty minutes…

Will groaned inwardly. Nico’s automatic response of sarcasm just shouldn’t be appropriate for talking to kids. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be demonstrated to him right now, as Andromeda seemed about as gleefully enthusiastic about it as Nico was cynical.”

“And, on the subject of training, Will, what are the rules on talking in battle?”

“Instructions only,” said Will dully. “Or if you’ve got something witty to say to your opponent. Except Percy, who struggles with ‘witty’.” He wiped the ant-residue off his knife onto a nearby tree. “Now, let’s get you back to camp.” Nico picked up Andy’s suitcase and they started walking around the corner to the bus-stop.

After a quick glance at the clouded-over sky, Will checked the timetable. He checked his watch. He checked the timetable again. He checked his watch again. He paled.

“Ha, Nico,” he said, trying to keep his voice bright, “you’ll laugh…”

“At what?” said Nico, suddenly chilly.

“You know how we were going to get the next bus?”

“Yes,” hissed Nico, deeply suspicious.

“Well, um,” Will tugged nervously at his collar. “We may just have, er, missed it…”

Nico scowled. “I _knew_ it. You’ll just have to wait for the next one, won’t you?”

“We will – what? Me? Nico –!”

Nico smiled and put his hand on Andy’s shoulder before stepping back into the shadow of the tree.

Will opened and closed his mouth in surprise. That was that, then.

He wished he’d thought to bring a book. 

* * *

 

Chiron blinked as Nico stepped out from behind a cabinet, holding a girl and a suitcase.

“This is Andy.”

The girl turned round to look at Nico, her eyes wide. “Can we do that again?”

“Not now. Talk to Chiron. He’s nice. He’ll introduce you to Mr D. He’s not, generally.”

 Chiron looked down at Andy and gave her a reassuring smile. She beamed back up at him. It was remarkable, Nico thought, how easily she took everything in

“Hello, Chiron. Are you a centaur? What’s it like having four legs? Why is there a wheelchair over there? When’s dinner? Why is Nico’s hair so messy? Do you have a normal stomach or a horse’s stomach?”

Chiron raised his eyebrows. The girl reminded him very strongly of someone. “All in good time, Andromeda.” She pulled a face at the name.

He looked over at Nico.

“Where’s Will?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“He missed his bus.” Nico looked pointedly at Chiron. “We got held up.”

Chiron returned a look which said: ‘We’ll talk about that later. I’m concerned, but we shouldn’t worry our new camper. Also, you really shouldn’t have left Will out there.’ It was, admittedly, a complicated look.

Nico nodded, his eyes saying: ‘OK, I’ll wait, and I am quite worried about what happened, but not so much that I think we need to involve too many people. I will, by the way, leave Will wherever I like.’ Hey, Nico could do complicated looks too.

“Would you go and get Jason, Nico?” asked Chiron. “Andy and I will just be a few minutes.”

Nico nodded. “Will do.” He stepped out of the room. 

* * *

 

Jason looked down at the girl beside him. She hadn’t let up with the constant stream of questions. And that was a pain, because he hadn’t been able to properly hear what Nico and Chiron had started talking about. Something about things getting too lax – and then something else about satyrs.

“Is this place always this empty?”

Jason zoned back into the walk around the camp. “Well, it’s mostly a summer camp –people get trained up and go home able to defend themselves. We find most people in the summer, but, sometimes, there are people like you who we discover at any time. Once we know who you are, it’s best if we get you trained up as soon as possible.”

“So I can fight off those ants. It was lucky that those two were there just when the ants turned up. Amazing timing! When do I get to fight ants? Are they like, you know, a _thing_?”

He stared blankly at her. “What? The ants? Timing?”

“No. The two who came to pick me up.”

“Oh, Nico and Will? Yeah.”

“Thought so. They bicker like couples do on TV.”

Jason grinned. “You’ve got it! It’s practically the only way they interact – the defining feature of their relationship.” They stopped outside the rickety cabin. “This is you. Hermes. Just until you’re claimed, OK?”

“OK. When’s –?”

“In twenty minutes. There’ll be a horn, and –” (Jason pushed open the cabin door and saw one of the Stoll brothers lounging on a bed) “– Connor will be able to take you.” He grinned at Connor. “Connor, Andy; Andy, Connor. He’ll answer all the questions you’ve got.”

“Bye, Jason! Thanks!”

He gave a small salute, and wandered off. He wondered how long Connor would manage to hold out. 

* * *

 

Nico was lying in his coffin, reading, when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” He sat up. “You’ve missed dinner.”

He laughed to see Will slumped against the door, his hair plastered to his forehead, taking off his shoes, and with an uncharacteristic scowl on his face.

“Yeah. Well, it turned out, when the bus turned up –”

“You needed this?” Nico produced, somewhat guiltily, a bus ticket from his top pocket. “Yeah. I forgot that I had it. Sorry.”

“Are you, indeed? Well, I only had the money for an under-13 ticket. Which, for a 13-18 ticket got me up to about two miles away. And then –” He hurled a shoe to the floor. It let out a little puddle as it landed. “– it started to rain! And my shoe has a hole in where the ant grabbed it.”

Nico could only shrug, and laugh. “So you’ll be shadow-travelling with me in future…?”

Will shivered at the thought. “No… But maybe your zombie chauffeur isn’t quite so bad.”

“You’re weak, Sunshine, _weak_.”

“Maybe. But I’m also hungry.”

Nico hopped out of bed and over to a small table. He picked up a little tin-foil package. “Here. It’s a chicken pie. Probably cold by now.”

Will took it gratefully, and perched on the edge of another coffin, this one upturned.

“How’s Andy?”

“Sending the Stoll brothers mad with her questions.” Nico let Will eat in silence for a while. “I had a bit of a go at Chiron…”

Will looked up from the food. “Why?”

“There should have been more of a careful check on that girl! Where was the satyr? There was a demi-god growing up not half an hour from here and we knew nothing about it! If we hadn’t turned up when we did –”

“It’s funny how those ants showed up _exactly_ when we did. Almost like it was _us_ that they were after, not her.”

“Yeah.” Nico’s eyes wandered over Will’s face. His boyfriend didn’t seem too fazed by that thought. He just kept chewing.

“Isn’t your dad in charge of monsters?”

“Kind of. They don’t do what he tells them; he just lets them be reborn or not.”

“He still hates heroes?”

Nico nodded. “Most of them.”

Will winked. “He hasn’t met me yet.” He rumpled up the empty tin foil. “What’s Chiron going to do about your concerns?”

“Raise them with the Council of Cloven Elders. Maybe even take them to the Winter Solstice. I think they’ve all been getting a little bit too laid back – relieved, exhausted, whatever – after the last war. And that’s when mistakes are made.”

“Yeah. We’ve got to keep sharp. Who knows what the next catastrophe might be.” Will yawned. “Got any pudding?”

Nico raised his hands. “Sorry, no. I forgot.”

“Now _that_ was a mistake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you who've viewed/reviewed/left kudos so far. I hope you're enjoying it.


	6. The Gods Decide Everything's OK

“Can you two stop doing that?”

“What?” asked Nico, breaking away from Will. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked up at Jason, who was hanging over the seat in front. “Kissing?”

“Yeah. It’s really getting excessive.”

“You don’t have to watch,” pointed out Will.  “Besides, if Piper was here –”

“Ah, _that’s_ the problem,” sniggered Nico, watching Jason’s face fall. “He’s jealous. Though you’ll see her at Olympus.”

“Jason's loneliness can be rectified.” Will leaned towards Jason and puckered his lips. Jason quickly backed away, and Will was rewarded with a light slap from his boyfriend. “It was a joke – it was a joke!” he protested, rubbing his red right ear.

“Hmph.” Nico folded his arms and turned away to look pointedly out of the minibus window. Will glared at Jason.

Jason grinned wickedly. “I knew I could get you two to stop being so lovey-dovey!”

In a flash, Nico was cuddled into Will’s side.

Jason screwed up his face. “That’s – that’s –”

“That’s what, Jason?” asked Will, laughing.

“So unfair!” 

* * *

 

There aren’t normally parking spaces in front of the Empire State Building. Particularly not for a couple of minibuses. But, as it turns out, if you’re there for a meeting of the gods, there are.

As they all piled out onto the pavement, three figures ran up to them. Percy, Annabeth, and Piper.

Piper threw her arms around Jason. Will and Nico exchanged glances.

“How’s school?” Will asked Annabeth, over the sound of the kissing couple.

“It’s going really well!” she said. “And not a single monster.”

“Yeah.” Percy looked quite disappointed at that. “We keep out of trouble.”

“Plenty of time for that a camp,” said Nico.

Percy grinned. “I hope so!” He shrugged. “It keeps Mom happy. Which keeps me in blue food.”

At long last, Jason came up for air, and was immediately tackled into a hug by Percy.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. “So, how are things at the camp?”

“Oh, pretty quiet. We’ve got a new girl.”

“Don’t even mention her…” groaned Connor Stoll, exiting the other minibus. “The sooner she gets claimed, the better.”

Nico gave a taunting smirk. “She might end up being a Hermes.”

Connor paled. “Oh, gods, no!”

Annabeth raised her eyebrows. “How can she be that bad?”

“She never stops asking questions!”

“I remember a kid like that,” said Percy. “No good came of him.”

Annabeth sighed. “Come on. Time for the family reunion.” 

* * *

 

“And aren’t these two just adorable together?” cooed Aphrodite. In front of a number of the other gods and demigods. Some of whom he respected. Aunts! Or whatever relation she was to him.

In his mortification, Will wanted to sink into the ground. Nico actually did, only realising when his ankles had disappeared through the marble.

Amazingly, it was the arrival of Will’s dad that made everything less embarrassing. They first noticed when the clouds around them started to evaporate. As more and more of New York became visible around them, they then heard the roar of an engine. Percy’s head whipped round.

“Everybody down!” he cried; quite unnecessarily, for there were already nymphs, gods and heroes making undignified dives to the floor out of the way of the blazing red bullet which was hurtling towards them.

The car hit the pavement of Olympus and skidded, the brakes locking. The was a squeal of tyres as it executed a handbrake turn and came to a halt.

Apollo jumped lightly out of the car. “Hi, all! Am I late?” He looked around. “Where is everyone?”

One by one, divine and demi-divine heads popped up from behind fountains, shrubs and statues.

Artemis was the first to speak, walking calmly towards him. “No, brother, you are, in fact, early. The shortest day got a little shorter.” She pulled the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into a pocket of her tunic.

Apollo’s face fell. “You can’t take that!” She ignored him and walked on by.

“This is why you should park in the garage. I made it especially for you,” said Annabeth, shaking her head.

Biting his lip, the god shrugged. “So, what was everyone talking about without me? What’s the hot gossip?”

Will felt himself blush, and noticed that, uncharacteristically, Nico was too. He saw Aphrodite start to grin.

“Are we having this meeting, or not?” asked Athena, sweeping up the steps behind them. “You don’t want Zeus to push everything through while you’re all out here chatting, do you?”

As ever, she was right. They trooped in after her.

The gods took their thrones. Even the minor ones had exquisite thrones, while the demigods had a section of comfortable looking chairs. No more were they to be wholly shut out of negotiations: the campers now had the authority represent the camp.

Not, Will thought, in a slightly sceptical moment, that the gods had made clear exactly how much their voices counted, but it was, he supposed, a start.

The demigods sat down, in no particular order, which let Will sit next to Nico. He saw Nico nod to his dad, saw Percy (keeping a careful distance from Annabeth) smile at a girl by the fireplace, and then noticed his own father giving him a thumbs-up. It made it all worthwhile, really.

Then the speeches started. 

* * *

 

In all honesty, it was a pretty speedy session. There were really only so many ways that ‘everything’s kind-of OK’ could be said. Chiron had made a few sharp remarks about the care that gods should show to their children, which had resulted in a few guilty-looking gods – Will was not surprised to note that his dad was one of them – and approving nods from Nico, Percy, and (in a rare moment in which she and her daughter’s boyfriend agreed) Athena. There had been a general resolution passed directing there to be more satyr patrols – a slightly stressed-looking Grove bit down hard on a tin can at that – and a renewal of the commitment to claim their children.

Then more boring stuff about how much gods could claim on expenses. Then Will noticed something

“Nico,” whispered Will.

“Mmm?” murmured Nico, stifling a yawn.

“Is your dad wearing jazzy socks?”

Nico took a surreptitious look under the hem of Hades’ robe. He smiled proudly, and leaned in to Will’s ear. “I sent them to him for his birthday,” he said under his breath. “Well, I mean, I just sent them. It’s not like there were calendars then. I didn’t think he’d actually put them _on_!”

He broke off as he saw his father looking over at them and frowning. Nico pointed subtly to his feet. Hades – and Will could hardly believe he was seeing this – smiled.

Sometimes, the gods didn’t seem very godlike at all. 

* * *

 

“Nico?” Will frowned as he was led by the hand through the palace. The meeting wasn’t quite over – it turned out that there were things that the gods wanted to discuss without their children present. Not even Percy. There was, much to the disappointment of many who’d been before, no party this year. So they were all trooping back to head to ground level. All of them, that is, except Will, who had been pulled off to one side by Nico as they’d left the throne room. “This isn’t the way to the lift!”

“We’re not going to the lift.”

“What are going to do to get back to the minibus? Jump?”

“We’re not going back to the minibus.”

“Then where –”

Nico stepped into the shadow of a massive vase, covered all over with carvings of – well, other vases. It was a sort-of self-referencing vase. Meta. Even –

Will saw – even _felt_ – all the light being pushed out of his world. With a gasp he felt his feet fall through the solid ground, and then, equally surprising, slam back into it.

Blinking, he felt his vision return, though there was not, at first, much difference, as he found himself in a place very dimly lit.

Nico, so pale that he seemed to glow in the dark, as still holding his hand. His pale face twisted into an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, Will. But it’s the only way to get here. Well, not technically, but it’s the most sustainable.”

“Go where?”

Nico bit his lip, suddenly shy. “Home, I guess. This is me, er, inviting you over for Christmas.”

Will stared at Nico in confusion. Christmas? But surely they didn’t celebrate – he hadn’t got Nico anything –

Wait. That wasn’t the most troubling thing about Nico’s last words. _Home_? Here?

Will looked around. At the torches on the wall. At the black bedspread. At the skull embedded in the wall.

He’d been invited for Christmas in the Underworld.

Of all the boys to fall in love with…


	7. Sleeping Over in the Underworld

Will couldn’t help but stare at the skull on the wall. He stepped towards it with a wary curiosity.

“Is that – is that _real_?”

Nico nodded. “His name was Egbert. He was a monk in the tenth century.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you were an ordinary person back then, I suppose it was a pretty god life. You got an education, food, lodging, all for the price of –”

“No, not why did he become a monk – why is it stuck into your bedroom wall?”

“Oh.” Nico gave a sheepish look. “A sort-of … family joke.”

Will raised his eyebrows, and took a little step away from Nico. “O- _kay_.”

“What? You’ve never had a family in-joke?”

“Not one that involved a skull…”

Rolling his eyes, Nico took off his coat and hung it over the skull. “Happy now?”

Will folded his arms. “No.”

“Tough. You can’t really get out of here, anyway.”

“Has your dad been advising you on how to conduct a relationship?”

Nico’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” He paused. “Oh.” His voice dropped. “It is a _bit_ ‘kidnappy’, isn’t it…”

 “Just a bit, Death Boy.” Will said, tweaking Nico’s nose. “But at least you waited until, you know, after we were going out. At this rate, by, say, the year 4500, children of Hades will be able to conduct absolutely normal, non-abducting, relationships.”

Nico tipped his head from side to side. Then he looked quite guilty. “If you don’t want to stay –”

“No, no, Nico. It’s fine.” Will smiled. “Just, next time, warn me first, OK?”

“OK.” Nico looked down at his feet. “So, shall I show you around?”

“Is your dad –?”

“He knows I’m here, and that I’ve brought you. But he and Persephone won’t be back for a while yet.” Nico looked thoughtful. “There’s definitely something that they’re not telling us. And Dad normally tells me about it if it’s important.”

“Then it can’t be that important,” reasoned Will.

“Or it’s so important that this time he really can’t let me know.” Nico went out of the room, frowning. “Did they seem a bit distracted to you?”

“Who?” asked Will, eyeing the skeleton armed with a bayonet that stood outside Nico’s door. Was it to keep people out, or _in_?

“The gods,” said Nico, acknowledging the bow that the skeleton gave him. Will wondered, slightly enviously, if there was a place where Apollo’s children got this kind of treatment. Was there a palace on Olympus? Maybe he and Nico could go there someday –

“Will?” Nico clicked his fingers to get his attention.

“What did you say?”

“I _said_ I thought they seemed to be skipping over things. Didn’t you to expect there to be more resistance to the charge of negligence against them? They just rolled over on it.”

“It was true,” said Will.

“That doesn’t usually stop them from opposing something if it’s inconvenient for them.” Nico narrowed his eyes. “It was almost like they wanted to placate us with something. So we’d leave happy – and without asking questions.”

“If they did, it worked,” said Will. Nico pushed open a large door, and Will gasped.

“This really is like Olympus, but like its photographic negative,” breathed Will, gazing around the throne room. It was currently missing its thrones, which, presumably, were still up at Olympus.

“He’s not quite so bitter about it these days,” commented Nico, leading Will across the hall. More skeletons sprang to attention. “Not now that they let him up whenever he likes. He’s thinking of setting up a little residence on Olympus. Annabeth left him some land in case he ever wanted to.”

“A holiday home?”

“I guess so.” Nico smiled as he reached a door. “This, though, is quite unique.”

He opened it, revealing a vast library. At least, from the closest shelves Will assumed that it was a library. The parts not lit by the torches by the door are in total darkness. Obviously it had been decided that flaming torches were not a good idea to have dotted around all over the place. Will was sure, though, that he heard pages rippling around the room.

Will’s eyes gleamed at the sight of it. “What is this place?” he said, his mouth hanging open.

“Book are not absolutely dead things,” said Nico, wryly. “All books have copies which have been lost or destroyed. There’s never been a perfect print-run in history. And they end up here. One for every book ever written.”

“Cool,” grinned Will. “How do you find a book in this place?”

“The same way you get food at camp. Just –”

He broke off, seeing that Will already had a book in his hand. “Think it?” asked Will.

“What have you got?”

Will showed it to him.

Nico squinted at it. “Kates? Who’s that?”

“Keats.” Will shook his head and opened the book to a random poem. “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave / Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; / Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss.” He leaned forwards. “Well that’s not true.” He kissed him. “But, then again, you’re not a figure on a vase.”

Nico blushed, and then looked curiously at Will. “You’re not dyslexic?”

Will shook his head. “Apollo’s children generally aren’t. Especially needing to look after medicines.” He waved the book of poems. “It would make writing things like this needlessly hard, for a start!”

“Keats was a demigod, too?”

Will nodded. “Badly poisoned by a manticore in London. He went to Rome looking for the cure, but didn’t make it.”

“How do you know about all the gods and their children?” asked Nico.

Will shrugged. “I’ve been a regular camper for years. It’s what we learn about, when there isn’t a war on.” He patted the book. “Can I keep this?”

Nico nodded. “Even if you lose it, it would end up here again.”

The pair of them left the library, and wandered back towards Nico’s room. Nico paused outside an ornate doorway. “We just need to nip in here.”

“What’s in there?” asked Will, impressed by the decoration.

Nico pulled open the door. “A store cupboard.” He rummaged around. “Here,” he said, handing Will a sleeping bag and some towels. Black, obviously. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Well, all my clothes are still in my cabin…” Will replied.

Nico looked embarrassed. “I totally forgot about that! OK, you go back to my room, and I’ll be right back with that.”

He vanished into the shadows, leaving Will to traipse along the corridor, sleeping bag and towels in hand, past the skeletons, and into Nico’s room. Nico’s coat had fallen down, exposing the skull.

Will sighed. He was just going to have to get used to that.

* * *

 “OK,” said Nico, poking his head around the door. “I met dad when I was coming back from collecting your stuff –” (He dumped a bag onto the floor) “and it’s time for dinner! Come on!”

Will looked up from his book, but didn’t move from the chair.

“Will?” said Nico, stepping into the room. “Are you OK?”

His teeth clenched, Will shook his head. “I’m not sure I’m that hungry…” he mumbled.

Nico went across to him. Will had turned quite pale. His eyes flicked up to Nico’s.

“Are you ill?” asked Nico, putting his hand to Will’s forehead. It was damp with sweat. “Because if you are, then I think that’s your area.”

“I’m not ill,” said Will. “I’m just not hungry.” His stomach rumbled.

Nico blinked, and his worried look softened into something closer to a smile. “You’re _scared_.”

“Well…” Will looked away. “Yes.”

“Of what? Of my dad?”

“Yes! He’s _Hades_. And your step-mother, by all accounts, is a bit odd.”

“Oh, it’ll be OK. She won’t mind you. It’s me she doesn’t like. As for my dad, well, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“I can’t imagine. But I bet _he_ could!”

“You’re worrying too much. I’ll be with you. Besides, he’s a god – if he was going to do you harm he’d have done it by now.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Not very reassuring, Nico.”

“It’s the best I’ve got, Sunshine. Now, food.” Nico held out his hand. Will took it, and got to his feet.

“Fine, but, if I get killed at this meal – I – I – I won’t let you visit me in the Underworld.”

Nico raised an eyebrow. “You try and stop me.” 

* * *

If you’d asked Will as a wide-eyed, naïve, ten-year-old whether, within five years, he’d be sitting at a table with Hades and eating a Chinese take-away, ten-year-old Will would have looked at you as if you were totally insane.

And yet, fiddling with chopsticks – they were really very white, and Will had no desire to probe into what they might have been made from – here he was. Didn’t make it feel any less insane, though.

Nico was apologising nervously for the food. “… because if it had been anything made down here, you wouldn’t have been able to eat it. And I’ve certainly not had anything like this in ages…” Nico kept chattering on, as if afraid that someone else might say something if he stopped. Will suspected that his earlier cheeriness had most been a sham.

“What do you think of the Underworld, Will?” said Hades, breaking over Nico, who stopped, and gulped

“Well, I’ve not really seen much outside the palace, sir,” started Will (the ‘sir’ seemed to go down well), “but it seems – nice.” He scrabbled around for compliments that were appropriate. “Well-ordered. Everything where it should be.”

“And you have no desire to take anything, or anyone, out of that order?”

“Oh, no,” said Will, shooting a querying look at Nico. “That would be wrong. Very wrong, sir. Totally wrong.”

Hades nodded. “Excellent. I think we’re going to get along very well indeed. Most demigods don’t seem to get that it’s not their place to interfere here.”

“How – how silly of them!” said Will, desperately trying to stop his voice from cracking.

Persephone just smiled at them. That was, in its way, slightly more unnerving. She leaned forwards.

“So, how long have you two known each other?”


	8. Over-Sleeping in the Underworld

 “Will. _Will._ Wake up, Will!”

Will started awake, feeling himself roughly jolted. Rubbing his sleep-filled eyes, he turned around in his sleeping bag to see Nico perched above him on his bed, his foot swinging off the side of it.

“Wha’time is it?” he said, thickly. He yawned.

Nico glanced out of the window into the black and grey world beyond. “A very good question indeed.”

Will rolled onto his back with a sigh, and then winced. Lifting himself up on an elbow, he felt his shoulder with his free hand. He frowned at Nico. “Did you _kick_ me just then?”

Nico nodded. “Yeah. I considered waiting for you to wake up on your own, but I got fed up.” He shrugged.

“Thanks…” muttered Will. He yawned again and slumped back down to the floor. His eyes started to close –

“Ow!” Will pressed a hand to his ribs and reluctantly sat up. “OK, OK, I’m awake!” He glared at Nico, whose expression didn’t change. “I just –” (he yawned yet again) “– don’t get why I’m so tired.” He ran an eye over Nico. “And why you’re so _chirpy_.”

Nico smiled. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before. But, I’ll admit, it’s weird for me seeing ‘groggy Will’, too.” He looked out of the window again. “Well, I guess this is my native seat.”

“You are to the manner born…” murmured Will. He shook himself, and pulled himself out of his sleeping bag. His pyjama trousers were too short for him, exposing his ankles. He circled his knees with his arms and rested his head against the side of Nico’s bed. After a moment of two, Nico started to fiddle with his hair. Will didn’t mind.

“So,” said Will, “what are we going to do today?”

Nico shrugged. “Whatever you like. The Field of Punishment are always a laugh.”

Will frowned up at him reprovingly.

“What!?” cried Nico. “They deserve it!”

Will just shook his head. Nico thought. “Is there anyone you want to visit?”

“Anyone dead, you mean?”

Nico nodded.

Will closed his eyes. “No. I don’t. Not at the moment. I’d really prefer to remember them alive.”

Nico slipped off the bed to sit next to Will, and smiled sadly at him. “I thought you’d say that. But the offer’s always open if you ever do want to.”

“Thanks.” Will opened his eyes again. They were very faintly bloodshot. “Uh, anything less ghoulish?”

“In the Underworld?” Nico sucked in his cheeks. “I’ll have a think.”

“My only other condition is that there are no more family conversations.”

“About whether we’d –”

“Yep.”

“Or –”

“U-huh.”

“Or even –”

“Yeah.” Will went pink. “That really happened, didn’t it?

“With Dad there and everything.” Nico buried his head in his hands. “What made her think that we had?”

“Flower goddesses have surprisingly … inventive minds.”

“I didn’t even know what half of those words _meant_.” Nico blushed. “And I don’t really want to look them up, either.”

Will leaned sideways and rested his head on top of Nico’s. He was aware of Nico being quite irritated at this, so he kept doing. “Yeah, but we should note that you get confused about what ATMs are.”

“I know that one! There’s a little guy who sits inside them and gives out the money.”

Will sniggered.

Nico tipped his head back to glare at Will, but his hair got in the way. “Are you about to say that it’s the perfect job for someone my height?”

“No, no.”

“Or that I’d be, I don’t know, _too_ short for it?”

“No, Nico – you really think that’s how they work?”

“Yes. Wait – it isn’t?”

“No. It’s all by computer.”

“What! Not something else.” Nico threw his arms up. “Is everything in this century done by computer!”

“No need to get so irate, Nico Di–ark-ages.”

“That was pretty awful, Will So-lame.”

“And that was better?”

Nico’s mouth twisted into a sheepish smile. “No…” He narrowed his arms. “Travis is in _so_ much trouble.”

Will laughed. “Well, you think about that, and also about whether there’s anything we can do down here that doesn’t involve too many dead people. And/or monsters.” He got up. His pyjama top was too short for him, too, Nico noticed. “In the meantime, I’m going to get dressed.” He picked up some clothes and a towel. He stared at the various doors. Any one of them could be a portal to some hellish dimension. Could be. “Um. Which is the bathroom?” 

* * *

 

“So you decided on fishing?”

“Yeah. That’s fun, right?” Nico rolled his eyes. “ _Normal_.”

“In the River Styx?”

“Well, where else would you go? The Lethe? The Phlegethon? The Acheron.” Nico shivered. “Cocytus.” He shifted in the boat. “Trust me, this is the best river. At least if you fall in you become nigh-on invulnerable.”

“Apart from the curse.”

Nico tipped his head from side to side. “It didn’t seem to affect Percy that badly. But, true, I’d advise against falling out.”

“And this is what you consider ‘normal’, is it?”

“Yeah. You liked playing with Cerberus, right?”

“Well, it made me realise why some of the souls down here have been squashed flat.”

Nico shrugged. “It doesn’t actually matter to them. They don’t _know_ that they’re flat.”

“I notice that I’m doing all the rowing,” said Will.

Nico raised an eyebrow at Will, who was (slightly ineptly) pulling on the oars. “I offered to get one of my – people to do it.”

“By that hesitant ‘people’, you mean one of the legion members of the dead that serve you as their master don’t you?”

“Um. Yeah.”

Will sighed. “I don’t have ‘people’.”

Nico patted him on the knee. “It’s OK. You can borrow some of mine, if you like.”

Will pulled a face. “I’m fine without, actually.”

Nico laughed. “OK. Hold up here.”

Will let go of the oars and let the boat drift. He peered over the side. Once it might have been clear (if black), but now it looked thick and oily. He suddenly wondered what kind of fish lived in this river. Probably not trout…

He wrinkled his nose. “It’s a bit – mucky. As bad as Percy always said it was.”

Nico nodded. “Yes. Try not to hook out some of its sewage. Here.” He handed Will a fishing rod, and they set up. “Now we wait.”

“There are things in here, right?” said Will, after a while.

“Oh, yes. People having been claiming that their fish are bigger than they really were since the beginning of time. Those made-up fish end up here. Which is quite good for fishing here. They really are –” Nico spread his arms out “– _this_ big.”

Will gulped.

Nico rummaged in his bag. “I brought a picnic, too. Real food.” He brought out some plastic boxes with sandwiches in. “One ham and cheese, one tuna. Take your pick.”

Selecting a tuna sandwich, Will frowned at Nico. “When did you have the time to do this?”

Nico smirked. “You spend _so_ long in the shower. I left a note to tell you where I was going, but by the time a came back you were _still_ in the bathroom, so I put it away. What do you do in there?”

“Well,” started Will, “I had to wash my hair, and then there’s moisturising, and then –”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Enough. I don’t want the whole routine. I’m just glad that I don’t share a cabin with you.”

“Why do you think I get up so early?” Will winked. “To coin a phrase: it takes effort to look this good.”

“And yet, after all that time…” Nico let the sentence trail off into the air, leaving the insult hanging unsaid.

Will pouted, and then jumped as his line twitched. “I’ve got something,” he breathed. Gently, he wound the line in. He felt the fish pull against him, trying to swim down and away. Will tugged harder. Nico watched, amused, as his boyfriend went puce with the effort.

He was even more so when Will at last managed to get his catch onto the boat. It was tiny; not even five inches long. But Will was beaming with pride.

“I caught something! I’ve never done that before!”

Nico tried to hide his laughter as he patted Will on the back. “Well done, Sunshine. Dinner all round, tonight.”

Will smiled wider. “What do we do now?”

“Put it back,” said Nico, scooping it into his hands. “It’s not like we can eat it, is it?”

Will shook his head, a little relieved. “Good. Let it go back into the water. Oh – hang on!” He touched the fish, and its mouth healed. Nico dropped it back into the water.

Will didn’t stop grinning for some time, and Nico really couldn’t help himself from sharing in his excitement.

Over the next couple of hours, the two of them didn’t catch very much of anything, There were a few more tiddlers, and, once, there was an impressive-looking fin breaking the water, but nothing special. Charon passed from time to time, always giving them a friendly wave. The looks they got from the ferried dead were priceless.

Eventually, they gave up fishing, and just lay next to each other against the bow of the little boat, content to be rocked in the water. Staring up into the darkness, and trying to see if there was a roof somewhere, Will wondered if the Underworld could ever be romantic. As if reading his mind, Nico kissed him, and confirmed that yes, it could be.

A thought crossed Will’s mind. “How does it work?”

Nico turned his head. “How does what work?”

Will swept his arm across their up-facing vision. “This. Everything.” It had been quite a big thought.

“What do you mean?” asked Nico, sitting up. The boat bounced a little.

“Well, those fish – well, really, all the promises – how do they get here? What are the people on the boat really seeing? Why is the Underworld real, and not anything else?”

Nico frowned. “I – I suppose – well, I think – uh. I don’t know.” He looked at Will. Hey locked eyes for what seemed like a very long time. Then, inside Nico’s dark eyes, something flickered, and then seemed to shine. Grinning, he sat bolt upright. “Is – is this the only one? Are _all_ promises here, or just those on the Styx? And if so, how does that happen? How does it know that you’ve made a promise in it? Are the Fates everywhere at once, just there in potential, not reality?” He paused in his string of questions. “If we’re underground, where’s the light coming from?” He beamed at Will, and kissed him. “Why did I stop asking questions?”

Will smiled, uncertain. “I wasn’t being serious –”

“But, Will,” said Nico, becoming more excited, “there’s so much that we don’t know. How do the virgin goddesses have those ‘brain children’? How does a demi-god inherit their parent’s powers – and why is it not consistent? What’s our – what’s it called – genetic make-up? Come to think of it, what’s the biological nature of a god? They must have one, surely – or we wouldn’t exist!” Nico kissed Will again. “Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve had so many questions! And you know what I’m going to do now?”

“What?” Will was slightly taken aback by Nico’s sudden enthusiasm.

“I’m going to find out the answers. To everything!”

Will opened his mouth to tell him that they didn’t need to know, that they couldn’t know, that Nico was being overambitious. That he wouldn’t have the time. But then he realised – this was it! This was Nico’s project – to understand the gods.

Nico, Will thought, smiling, had never been one for low ambitions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh...


	9. Holding a Torch for Someone

The pair of them dropped out of the shadows. Will looked around him at the monumental buildings which provided the shade in the setting sun.

“Er, where are we? This isn’t camp.”

Nico put his hand to his mouth. “Oh! You’ve not been here before – this is New Rome.”

Will gaped. “They really went for it, didn’t they?”

“Just a bit. Come on.” Nico offered Will his arm.

Looping his own into it, Will allowed himself to be led away. “Why did you bring me here –?”

As they turned the corner, they were presented with a blaze of light. The whole street was lined with torches, while people in brilliant white togas held yet more lights.

Nico grinned at Will’s stunned expression. “This is the festival of the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.”

Will blinked. “Oh.”

“Hey!”

They both turned in surprise as one of the toga-clad figures elbowed their way towards them. At first, they were confused, but then Nico spotted the blonde hair and the light reflecting off a pair of glasses.

“Jason!” He waved.

Jason reached them and grinned. He threw his arms around them. Will felt Nico squirm. “I hoped you two would show up. Having a nice holiday?”

He let them go, took a step back and peered at Will. He put on a serious face. “You look terrible, Will. Four days in the Underworld, and you’re almost as pale as Nico!”

Will raised an eyebrow, worried. “Really?” He shot a glance at Nico.

Nico rolled his eyes. “Jason is exaggerating. You _are_ a bit paler, but not by that much…”

“Good…” Will glared at Jason, who just shrugged and laughed.

“You two need to toga up,” said Jason.

“Uh, I don’t have a toga,” said Will.

“Luckily, we have quite a few. This way.”

Nico unlooped his arm from Will’s. “I’ll be back in a minute, OK?” He vanished into the shadows.

Will turned back to Jason. “All right.” 

* * *

 

This was silly. It was like wearing a bedsheet. Only much, much heavier. Dead-eyed, Will gazed at a grinning Jason. “You’re just trying to make me look stupid, aren’t you?”

“It’s the same as what I’m wearing. Now, take this, and go out into the procession.”

Will took the torch. It was heavier than he had anticipated. The flame also flickered rather too close to his face for comfort. Holding it a little out from his body, he started towards the steps down from the temple. Then he stopped suddenly.

“The Unconquered Sun? Sol Invictus?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Isn’t that a bit blasphemous towards my dad? I mean, _he’s_ the god of the sun.”

“And it’s _him_ we’re celebrating. It’s all been rolled into the one god now, you know that. So you’ll be praising him tonight. He’ll like that.”

“Don’t they all…” grumbled Will.

“Hey, if we try really hard, he might even turn up!”

Will groaned. “I can imagine…”

Jason led the way out and down the steps, and they joined on to the mass of people, adding their gleaming faces to the reddened ones already there. The march was slow, and there was some cheerful chanting. Will didn’t know what the words were, but the tune was kind-of catchy. He hummed along. Somewhere, there were drums.

He felt a hand slip into his. He looked to his side. Nico grinned up at him, starkly different to the rest in his black toga.

“You don’t have a torch,” said Will. He held out his own. “Want to share?”

With his free hand, Nico took hold of it with him. Jason looked at the two of them and shook his head. No-one else seemed to have even noticed.

The procession wound through the city before, at last, halting before the temple of Apollo. The chanting grew louder, and all along the street people started to lift their torches. Will and Nico copied them.

As the shouting reached a climax, all the torches suddenly blazed blindingly brightly, and then were snuffed out. This coincided with the moment that the sun set, leaving everything in total darkness.

Will shivered slightly. Nico’s fingers tightened reassuringly around his.

There was complete silence.

Then the temple flared with light, sending the shadows recoiling across the city. Will heard Nico gasp. When he looked at Nico, he caught sight of himself, and realised why. He was glowing with a uniform golden light. Even Jason was impressed. Will looked around. Here and there, there were people glowing, just like him. They must have been relatives of Apollo. He looked back towards the temple. At the top of the stairs, there was a burning figure.

“Hi, all!” called out his dad.

Will wondered if it was best to just assume that Apollo was going to do something embarrassing.

“It’s really mega that you’ve turned out to do this. So, to thank you, I’ll give you a poem.”

Will put his head in his hands. He wasn’t the only one.

“ _People of New Rome,_

_Your praises are like flowers._

_We all know I’m awesome._

Oh. Hang on. That last line doesn’t work. Er, how about: _We all know I’m great_?”

Jason stifled a laugh. So did Nico. Everyone cheered anyway. Apollo vanished, but the light remained. The torches all relit, and people hung them on the sides of the street.

“Now comes the fun part – or, rather party!” grinned Jason, dragging the two of them away. 

* * *

 

The Romans knew how to throw good parties. It must be the result of being so straight-laced the whole time, Will thought. When they relaxed, they really went for it.

He and Nico wandered aimlessly amongst the crowds. Nico was eating some candyfloss. And was getting it everywhere.

“How’s the toffee apple?” asked Nico.

“Mmm.” Will tried to open his mouth. “Nngg.”

Nico laughed, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Then I’ll have to do the kissing, then.” He kissed Will. They stopped walking, and closed their eyes. Nico start to probe with his tongue, seeing if he could taste the -

“Hi.”

The pair of them sprang apart.

“Dad!” spluttered Will, brick red, managing to wrench his teeth apart. Despite his mortification, his tongue, the medical professional, tested his mouth for any damage.

“I just thought I’d check up on number-one son. Good to see you enjoying yourself, Will.” Apollo put a hand on Will’s shoulder and grinned. He winked at Nico, who was also very red. “Are you going to introduce us?” he asked Will.

Will frowned. “But you know Nico.”

“I was under the impression that this was how things go.”

Will threw up his hands. “Fine. Dad, Nico. Nico, Dad. Happy now?”

“Very.” Apollo flashed them both a dazzling smile and ruffled Will’s hair. “Keep up the good work.”

He went to walk off, but paused. “Will – are you OK? You look a little pasty.”

“I’m fine!” said Will. “Really!” But his dad was already gone.

Nico scowled. “Well, that was a bit embarrassing.”

“You’re the one that’s always kissing me!”

“You love it.” Nico smiled happily. “And so do I. Chestnut?” 

* * *

 

“Well,” said Will, resting his head on Nico’s shoulder, “that was quite a party.”

Nico sipped at a lemonade and nodded, trying to keep his eyes open. Many of the older (and not a few of the younger) Romans were shuffling off the streets, not quite in straight lines. "Definitely one to keep in the diary for next year.”

“’Course.” Will nuzzled into Nico’s neck. “You have some good ideas sometimes. Though I’m still not convinced by the togas.”

“Neither am I, if I’m honest. I have to say, I’m a Greek at heart. Which, as an Italian, feels weird.”

“The black suits you, you know.”

“I always wear black. And black suits everyone.”

“True. Maybe you should stop.”

Nico turned his head to regard Will coolly. “I hope that’s a joke, Sunshine.”

“What if I were to ask nicely?”

“Then –” Nico scowled, and stifled a yawn. “I might be forced to consider it. But don’t push it.”

“You know your big list of questions?”

“Yep?”

“Can you add ‘How does ‘downsizing’ work’ to it?”

Nico’s mouth twitched, his interest stirred despite his drowsiness. “It’s already on there. I mean, we know why – lack of belief – but we don’t know exactly how the powers themselves are transferred. And that raises more interesting questions – if gods aren’t fixed in their powers, what changes to give them new ones?”

“Have you thought of any answers for any of them yet?”

Nico shook his head slowly. “No. _Someone_ keeps distracting me.”

“Doing what?”

“Being - nearby.”

Will snorted. “You’re much weaker than people realise, Death Boy, aren’t you? No self-control whatsoever.”

He got no reply.

“Nico?”

But Nico was asleep.


	10. What you Will (or, Twelfth Night)

 

Will bobbed his foot in time to the music, lying back in bed with one leg crossed over the other. All around him were pinned dozens of cards.

There was a knock at the door. Putting his book down, and pausing the music, Will got up from his bunk, and went over to open it.

After that, he just couldn’t stop laughing.

* * *

“Hey.” Nico waved at Annabeth through the Iris message. “I’ve got a question for you.”

Annabeth tried not to let her smile slip. “Another?”

Nico looked down and smiled embarrassedly. “So…” He hesitated, and then the next words came out in a rush: “It’s Will’s birthday, and I was wondering, since you’ve been here the longest, if you knew what to get him. Um.”

Annabeth laughed. “ _That’s_ what you want to know. Well –” She stopped, frowning. “Oh. I – I’ve got no idea.”

Nico’s face fell. “Really? Nothing?”

“I’m afraid I never really knew him that well,” she said. “He was always around at camp, but…” She shrugged. “I know he likes books?”

Nico tipped his head from side to side. “He’s got just about all he could want of those now.”

Annabeth frowned. “I don’t know what else to suggest. I’m sorry, Nico. You’re going to have to ask someone who know him better than I do.”

* * *

“OK,” said Travis sitting down next to his brother, “that girl –” (He nodded towards the Tyche table) “– was bad enough, but now Nico’s at it with the questions.”

“And his are really quite tricky,” agreed his brother.

“What are you two planning?”

The brothers turned. “Bruce!” They smiled innocently. “Us? Planning?”

Bruce shook his head. “You know that look only makes you seem more suspicious.”

Connor turned back round, “How did you know?”

“You had a – conspiratorial air.” Bruce sat down opposite them. “Plus,” he said, in an off-hand way, “ you’re _always_ planning something.”

“Maybe…” Travis grinned.

“Well, I’ve got a little proposition for you.”

“Oh, yes?” said Connor. He glanced at Travis. “We don’t normally work for order.”

“It depends who. Or what,” said Travis.

“Nico,” said Bruce.

The Stoll brother exchanged glances. “Funny you should say that.”

Connor leaned forwards curiously. “But what has the poor little kid done to you?”

Bruce flushed. “He – he set me up on a date with a dryad.”

“Ooh. Nasty. Anything else he’s done to you? Baked you a cake? Cleaned your shoes? Because all those deserve revenge.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “It’s worse than that. He told me that she’d only come out of her tree form once she’d got used to me. So I waited. And waited. And waited. For hours, I sat there.”

“Then what happened?” asked Travis.

“It was just a tree,” said Bruce sullenly.

The brothers snorted with laughter. “That,” said Connor, “is quite a good one!”

“Why haven’t we thought of that?” said Travis. “That Nico is _devious_.”

“ _Any_ way,” said Jason, through gritted teeth, “I wondered if you could help me get my own back.”

“Hmm. It’s probably Nico’s turn for something. And he has been going around with those non-stop questions – not to mention that he’s only encouraging Andy, and she was bad enough to start with!”

“What do you think we should do?”

The brothers thought. Then Connor grinned slyly. “You know how it’s Will’s birthday in a couple of days?”

“Yeah,” said Travis and Bruce.

“And you know how Nico would do practically anything Will wanted.”

“Mmm,” said Bruce, thoughtfully. “Though the sweet thing about Will is that he never wants anything.”

“Hence why Nico has been at a bit of a loss these last couple of days,” filled in Travis.

“Well,” said Connor, spreading his fingers, “what is we were to suggest something to him?”

“Like what?” asked Bruce.

Travis smirked. “Something totally embarrassing for Nico. Something he’d never do unless he thought it was for Will.”

“Any ideas?”

Connor looked across the tables at where the two boys were sitting: one quite tall, blonde, and in a many colours as you could count; the other small, and a vision in black. His gaze shifted back to his brother and Bruce. “One or two.” 

* * *

 

“Are you _sure_ that there’s nothing you’d particularly like?” wheedled Nico.

“Absolutely,” laughed Will. “If you have to get my anything, then make it a surprise.” He kissed Nico on the forehead. “But, really, as long as you’re around, there’s nothing else I need.” Without waiting for Nico to groan at the sickly sweet turn of phrase, or press him any further for a present suggestion, Will turned and walked into the Big House. Travis had injured himself falling over – or was it off? (Will didn’t really want to know why) – something. Whatever it was, it left a pretty nasty sprain.

Nico kicked at a stone as he walked back towards his cabin. This was not very helpful. Everybody he talked to knew, and liked, Will. But nobody seemed to know very much _about_ him. He was a kind-of vacuum of pleasantness. Affable, but mysterious. But you didn’t notice the mysterious bit. Maybe –

Maybe he was overthinking this. Overthinking Will. Just overthinking in general.

“Hey, Nico.”

Nico turned, surprised. “Oh, hi Connor. Here to see Travis? Will’s in with him now.”

Connor made a dismissive gesture. “No, he gets himself into scrapes all the time. For things that I can tell you that I know nothing at all about.” He gave Nico a serious glance. “Especially if Chiron is asking.”

Nico’s brow furrowed. “Yeah. Whatever. Was there something? I’m a bit busy.”

“Looking for a birthday present?” fished Connor.

Nico nodded, distracted. “I just don’t know.”

“Can I help?”

Nico’s harassed expression immediately softened. “You can?”

“’Course. Travis and I have been here as long as Will, and, well, the number of times we’ve been in the Infirmary – we know each other pretty well.”

“So, um, can you give me any ideas about what he might like?”

“He likes films.” Here, Connor wasn’t actually lying. He _did_ know Will quite well. And he like him, too. Everybody did. So he wanted him to get a proper birthday present from Nico, too. Though he was sure that Nico knew that Will like films.

Nico nodded and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course!” He bit his lip. “But which one…?” He looked hopefully at Connor, who shrugged.

“I don’t know all the ones he’s seen. But you’ve been working through his collection, haven’t you?”

Nico looked thoughtful. “I know where it is, too.”

“As a general rule, I think, it’s either classics, or the campier the better.”

Nico couldn’t suppress a smile. “That’s about right. Thanks, Connor!” He went to walk away.

“Oh! – and, Nico, he’ll never say this to you, but – dress more cheerfully, will you?”

Nico looked back at Connor in surprise, and then down at his black hoodie. Over a black top. Above black jeans, black socks, and black trainers. He was even wearing –

No need to go that far…

“Mmm…?” he said, uncertain. “Like what?”

Connor ran his eye over Nico. “How about a nice pair of yellow socks? He likes yellow. You’d suit it, too. And then a red shirt. And there’s a pair of pink trousers you could borrow, in the Hermes Cabin. And a hat. You definitely need a hat.”

Nico went pale. Connor hadn’t thought it possible for Nico to get much paler, but there he was. Paper-like. “R-really?” He spluttered. “Is all that necessary?”

Connor shook his head. “No. But I think he’d appreciate it if you made the effort.”

Nico eyed him dubiously. This seemed so like a practical joke. But it was so _obvious_ , if it was. The Stoll twins were usually much subtler than this. So that meant –

Was he overthinking again?

“Nico?” asked Connor. “You’ve gone all silent…”

“I’ll – I’ll think about it,” said Nico.

“Do that.” Connor patted Nico on the shoulder. “Come and see us if you decide to.” He walked away, and then glanced back at the Big House. “You know he would, if it was for you.” 

* * *

 

Nico tapped on the golden door, his present under his arm.

He felt like a complete prat. Did Will really want to see him dressed like _this_?

The trousers were too short (even on him!), meaning that he’d had to pull the socks far up his legs. The shirt clashed violently with his jumper – and the hat!

It had _flowers_ on! Multi-coloured ones.

Nico did not feel particularly awe-inspiring. And he liked feeling awe-inspiring. He could raise the dead! Travel faster than light! Split the earth in two!

Hmph.

The door opened. Will looked out, his eyes widening in shock. Nico saw the momentary struggle as Will tried to keep a straight face – and then failed.

Nico pushed his way into the cabin, past a laughing Will, his face crimson. As he slammed the door, he missed the clicking of a camera. Little did he know that they would be all over camp the next day.

He stood in the middle of the room, his arms crossed, and waited for Will to recompose himself.

“Well!” said Will, wiping his eyes, “I did –” (He snorted with laughter again as he noticed Nico’s butterfly-themed bow tie.) “– ask you to surprise me!”


	11. Interviews with Demigods (I)

“Right, enough faffing around – let’s make a start on this thing.”

Will almost jumped out of his skin as Nico appeared, from nowhere, suddenly at his elbow, and apparently in the middle of a conversation. He decided to ignore him for a moment or so, and focus instead on the son of Ares with a broken arm. Said boy was unconscious – not from the blood but from being unused to people popping out of the shadows. He'd get used to it in time.

Nico tapped his foot impatiently as Will set the arm. To Nico, it seemed as if Will was doing this particularly slowly. Eventually, Will finished. The boy still hadn’t come round.

Will shot Nico an angry look. “See what you did!”

Nico looked unabashed. “I made it easier for you.” He stuck his tongue out at Will.

Quick as anything, Will grabbed hold of it.

“Uugh! _Uugh!_ ” protested Nico, his eyes watering, and his fist batting against Will’s arm. Will pulled Nico gently towards him –

“What are you doing?” broke in the Ares boy.

Will blushed and let go. “Nothing…” he said, wiping his fingers on Nico’s top. He turned to the boy. “Now, you should heal up pretty fast, but come and see me if there’s a problem. Now, you can go – but need I say not to do it again?”

They boy was already half-way to the door. He turned back and grinned. He would do it again. Will knew that for a fact.

“Here, are you two –?”

Nico rolled his eyes, and pushed the boy out of the room. “None of your business.” He closed the door.

Will raised an eyebrow. “There was no need to close us in here. People will talk.”

“Yes. Us. Alone. Without other people butting in.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Nico smirked. “It’s hardly a secret, is it?”

“Don’t mean _that_ , either.”

“Don’t tarnish that halo of yours, Sunshine.” Nico’s face snapped back into serious. “Anyway – back to me.”

Will’s mouth twitched upwards. “Of course. Why do we ever leave that topic?”

“No idea. So, we need to get on with this investigation.”

“ _We_?”

Nico gave Will a blank look. “Uh-huh…?”

Will sighed. “Fine. But I’m not just writing down notes for you.”

“Of course not,” said Nico, brightly. “There’ll be filing to do, too!” He jumped back as Will swung a stethoscope at him. “Hey!”

“Out!” growled Will, trying not to laugh at Nico’s attempts to defend himself.

"Just because you won't admit that it's your true love..."

The stethoscope swung a little closer to Nico's face.

With a gesture of surrender, Nico opened the door and walked out. And into the Ares boy. Will walked into the back of Nico.

“Are you two really –?” started the boy again.

Nico looked at him, deadpan. “Yes. Frequently. It's glorious.” He walked off, and out onto the porch.

Will, pulling his coat on, followed. “Don’t scratch your arm!” he called back.

* * *

“So this is the grand plan? We stare at a blank piece of paper?”

Nico rolled his eyes and stretched out on Will’s bed. “We write things _on_ the paper.” He looked away. “Just as soon as I think of any…”

“What are we trying to do here?”

“A proper, rigorous, theology of the gods.”

“Oh.” Will sucked on the end of the biro. He’d been relegated to the desk. As scribe. And he'd  _said_ about that. Huh. Whatever.  “Don’t we know that already? You know, the accounts in Ovid, and Homer, and –”

“No, no. That’s _mythology_. Well,” Nico corrected himself, “strictly, that’s history. There’s loads of that, and we _do_ already know it. Or could ask Chiron.”

“Or one of the gods,” pointed out Will.

“True. Though I’m not sure you’ll get an unbiased rendering from one of them. But, what I want to do, is work out how it all operates. Why do we have our powers? How do our powers work? Why are gods gods?”

Will’s head shot up. He cocked an ear. “Did you hear that?”

Nico looked at him. “What?”

Will shrugged. “Thunder. Must have imagined it, then.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “So. Let’s start with what we know.”

“Right. Gods are the children of the Titans, who are in the generation after the Primordials, all of whom sprang from Chaos. Sort-of.”

“Yeah. Well, that was easy.” Will put down the pen.

“Mmm. Where did Chaos come from?”

“Does it have to come from anywhere?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Nico leaned forwards on the bed. “Because, once Percy told me that he asked Chiron about God, and Chiron brushed him off. Telling him not to get metaphysical. Well, let’s get a metaphysical!”

They both twisted round to look out of the window.

“OK…” said Will. “That was _definitely_ thunder.” His eyes slid back to Nico – who was grinning.

“Then we’re _definitely_ going to keep at this, if it upsets them that much!” 

* * *

 

“So, Jason, what can you do?” asked Nico. Will stood next to him, holding a clipboard.

Jason eyed them warily. They’d both just appeared out of the shadows of the practice field, and Nico was staring at him very intensely.

“Um… Impressions?” suggested Jason. He cleared his throat –

“No!” said Nico, hurriedly. He’d been subject to them before. “I mean powers-wise.”

“Oh. Er. I can fly, and summon thunder, and control the weather.” He looked confused. “You know this, though, right?”

“Show me.”

Jason exchanged a glance with Will, who just shrugged. Jason leapt into the air, buoyed up by the currents –

“No!”

Startled, Jason lost concentration and crashed back to the ground. “What?”

“More slowly. None of that showing-off. Just – just – can you go into the air without a run up?” Nico tipped his head quizzically to one side.

Jason concentrated, and, without making any movement, floated into the air. Nico stepped closer to him, and, putting his hand out, felt the air moving around Jason’s body.

“Interesting…” he murmured. “Will – it’s definitely physical. It requires effort to do it.”

Will made a note on his clipboard.

Nico stepped back. “Now: thunderbolt. Go!”

Obedient, Jason gestured with his right hand. There was a streak of light, and a small bush exploded.

“Hmm.” Nico raised an eyebrow. “Can you do that without pointing at what you want to blow up?”

A bolt struck the ground a couple of inches from Nico’s left foot. “Yes,” said Jason. Will had gone very pale; Nico seemed unconcerned.

“And they just appear out of the air, do they? _Against_ how lightning usually forms? Interesting.” He nodded to Will, who made another note. “Now –”

Nico shook his hair dry from the sudden cloudburst. “Thanks,” he said, curt. “So, what do you have to do in order to do that?”

Jason shrugged. “I just have to want it, I guess.”

“No prayers? No intervention from your father?” pressed Nico.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Double hmm.” Nico took a few paces around Jason. “It just – happens?” He stood very still, and frowned at a clump of grass.

Nothing happened to it.

“Are you OK, Nico?” asked Jason, stepping towards him.

Nico’s expression relaxed. “But _I_ can’t do it.”

Jason looked at him, nonplussed. “Of course not… You’re the son of Hades, not Zeus.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because Hades doesn’t have that power?”

“Why?”

“Because he’s in charge of the Underworld, and Zeus is in charge of the Sky!” Jason bit his lip. Was Nico being deliberately dense? Why was Will playing along with this? Was it all some elaborate prank?

Nico raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

Jason rolled his eyes, and spoke very slowly, as if to a child. “OK. There was a war between the Titans and –”

“Yes. I know. Skip to the end: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades draw lots for the Sky, the Sea, and the Underworld, respectively.”

“And?” asked Jason.

“Why did that give them particular powers?”

Jason shrugged. “It just did.”

“And, more importantly, what were they before?” pointed out Will. Nico blinked. He’d not thought of that.

“What do you mean _before_?” asked Jason.

“Before Zeus got the Sky, which happened _after_ the Titanomachy – the first one, I mean – what powers did he have?” asked Will.

“Well, the Cyclopses made him his master bolt,” said Jason.

“But,” said Nico, grasping Will’s idea, “aside from it being incredibly convenient that, having gained a storm power, he got the Sky, isn’t that an external weapon? Anyone could have used it – maybe even Percy when he had it.”

Jason frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“The powers of the gods aren’t necessarily natural to them, but derive from their roles. Maybe, if, say, you swapped Zeus and Poseidon, each would take on the powers associated with the other. And so might their children.” Nico grinned. “I wonder how you could test that!”

There was a long rumble of thunder.

Jason looked up nervously. “Do you really want to?”

Nico, though, was already thinking about something else. “What is it about your descent from Zeus that you have special powers? This is the thing I don’t get. Why can you control the weather, just because your dad, for whatever reason, does? The same with me and shadow-travelling, and Will and healing. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Another rumble. Nico glared at the sky. “You can do that all you want; I’m not giving up on this.”

“Um.” Will blushed. “That was me. It’s nearly time for dinner.”

Nico laughed, and turned round to face him. “That’s something else I want to try.”

“Dinner?” asked Jason.

“Sacrificing burnt offerings. What happens if we don’t do it?”

“The gods feel insulted?” suggested Will. “Then they get angry, and we get –” (He gulped.) “– inconvenienced.”

“Yeah, but, really, what are they going to do? Incinerate their own children?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them…” said Jason.

Nico shook his head. “They’re not _that_ crazy.”

“Maybe they’d block out powers,” suggested Will. “Like, a kind of grounding.”

Nico looked thoughtful. “Maybe. How, though? I mean, we just said that the origins of their and our powers are obscure.”

“Hmm,” said Jason. He blinked. “You are _not_ dragging me into speculating about this. It’s pointless. We know that the gods exist, and that they have powers, and so do we, by heredity, or something. Just accept it!” With that, he turned and walked off towards the cabins.

“I’m going to try it,” said Nico. “Not offering. I’ll see what happens. At the very least, it’ll prove whether or not they care, and, if the punishment is the suspension of out powers, then we’ll see if our powers come from them, or not.” He smiled brightly. “You with me?”

Will shifted uneasily. “I’d like to, Nico, but I don’t think I can risk having my powers blocked.”

“If they can do that.” Nico nodded. “I understand.” He looked at Will’s clipboard. He raised an eyebrow. “Why have you drawn a heart around my name?”

Will blushed. “I didn’t mean to show you…”

Nico snorted, and walked off, leading his boyfriend by the hand. “Not a good reason, Sunshine.”


	12. Interviews with Demigods (II)

The piece of paper wasn’t blank any more. In fact, there were quite a few now, piled up on one side of the desk, each covered in a mixture of Will’s neat hand, and Nico’s decidedly spikier one. Nico had made the comment that doctors were supposed to have bad handwriting. Will had explained that that was stereotyping, and, besides, he wasn’t really a doctor, as he essentially healed people by magic. And singing. Jason had said that Will had tidy handwriting because he was gay, and that they were neat like that. While he was fixing Jason’s broken nose and assuring him that the black eye would go down on its own, Will had explained, as Nico wiped the blood off his hand, that that was stereotyping too.

The papers were held in place by one of Will’s paperweights. It was a skull – a present from Nico’s dad. Will hadn’t asked if it was real, and, for Will was pretty sure he’d know if it was real if he checked himself, he’d deliberately not examined it too closely. It was quite a good paperweight, though. It was particularly good at discouraging people from moving it. The eye sockets seemed to follow you around the room. It had been accompanied by a note which had simply read: ‘Sorry for the ants.’

He’d always suspected that it hadn’t been a coincidence. Will had no intention of letting Nico see it. No need to send him off on an angry jaunt to the Underworld.

They had now interviewed all the year-round campers, performing the same tests that they had with Jason. The most interesting ones were those from the same cabin but with varying powers. Of those, though, the even more intriguing were those who shared both parents. Currently, of the year-rounders, that was just the Stoll brothers, though Thalia was someone they wanted to talk to.

Results, though, were unsatisfactory. There seemed no logic to any of it. Why one daughter of Athena (of the same age) was cleverer than another. Why Connor was a better thief than Travis. Why Clarisse was more aggressive than anyone in the entire world.

With every frustration, though, Nico seemed to get happier and happier. He’d spend hours trying to piece things together, or coming up with new questions. Occasionally, he actually came up with some answers.

They now knew, for instance, that demigods did have the normal number of genes, and that these could, fairly consistently, be identified for both parents. Will kept all the swabs carefully labelled in a box in the Infirmary, and had run a comparative chart on his computer. Gods, it seemed, had DNA too – and this was even passed down to the ‘mind-children’. Will, though, had nowhere near enough technology to determine if it was human DNA or something that was just compatible with it; he could only identify similar chemical traces between siblings. Nor could he separate out each gene. That required proper science.

They also knew that the gods were getting more and more suspicious. Chiron kept organising ‘activities’ for them that kept them apart all day. It was becoming harder and harder to interview people and test their new theories out. Some of the old ones were bearing a little fruit, though. Nico’s experiment of withholding burnt offerings had not resulted in the loss of his powers (as the range of startled people around Will knew – Will was well used to Nico’s appearances by now). Nico had received a stern note from his father, though, and he hadn’t been able to bring Will a new book in ages. But maybe the revocation of powers was just a step up from that, and Nico’s dad was just lenient – with Nico alone, of course. They wouldn’t know until they tried it out with other gods, and, so far, no-one else was willing to join Nico.

As he thought these things, lying on his bed in the Apollo cabin, Will squeezed Nico a little tighter. He felt a bit disloyal for not joining him, but he was worried about what the loss of his powers might do, if it turned out to be true. Concern had to trump curiosity. Nico kissed him on the jaw, and then buried his head in the hollow of Will’s neck. His ever-longer hair massed up over Will’s mouth and tickled his nose.

It was in this comfortable, though rather intimate, position that the Iris message arrived.

His eyes widening as Percy’s face appeared out of the air, Will took a sharp breath in – along with a fair chunk of Nico’s hair. Spluttering, Will squinted up at Percy. Detaching himself a little from Will’s side, Nico rolled his head onto the pillow and likewise looked at Percy.

“Hi,” all three chorused. All three were quite pink with embarrassment. None of them quite knew how to start.

Nico eventually spoke. “What do you want?” he said, sourly. He looked at his watch. “It’s, like, 11:30.”

“This is New York!” grinned Percy. “The city –”

Will tried to punch the Iris message. He only succeeded in making Percy laugh, but at least it distracted him. “I second Nico’s grumpy question: what do you want?”

“Firstly,” smirked Percy, “to know why Nico is still in your cabin this late. It’s after curfew.” He grinned. “I’ll tell Chiron…”

Nico snapped his fingers. A skeletal hand appeared on Percy’s shoulder, and he jumped, shrieking, out of view. He snapped his fingers again. Percy, red-faced and dishevelled, returned to the image. Will smothered a laugh.

“You were going to do what?” asked Nico, coolly studying his fingernails.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Good. Now, again, why in the gods’ names are you here?” said Nico.

“You asked me to be!” protested Percy. “I was at school, so Iris left a message here –”

“She does that?” muttered Will, surprised.

“Oh, yeah, you weren’t there…” murmured Nico, remembering.

“ – with my mum, so I thought I’d message you back.”

“ _Now_?” whinged Will. Nico elbowed him in the ribs.

“Excellent. So, I’ve been wanting to ask you a few things.”

“Shoot,” grinned Percy.

Nico snapped his fingers. He waited. He looked expectantly at Will.

"And what are you expecting that to do?"

"Make you get the notes."

"What's the magic word?"

" _Now_."

Will pulled a face and leaned over to the desk, Nico keeping a hold on the elastic of his pyjama bottoms so that he didn’t fall out of the bed (and take his warmth with him. He leaned back in again, clipboard in hand.

“So,” started Nico, “I want you to think back to when you had the master bolt. Years ago. Do you think you could have used it?”

Percy thought for a moment. “Yeah. I reckon I could have done. Zeus would have incinerated me with a lesser bolt, but still, yeah, I could have given it a go.” He hesitated. “You’re not in the process of doing something _really_ stupid, are you?”

Nico shook his head. “Oh, no. No! I’m just trying to understand how it works. How do you think you could have activated it?”

Percy nodded. “Quite easily.”

Nico frowned. “Really? You didn’t have it for that long –”

Percy grinned. “There was a pretty big button at one end. I guess pressing that would have made it work. And brought down all kinds of trouble on me. Besides, if only Zeus could use it, why was he so worried about Hades getting hold of it?”

“True.” Nico’s mouth twitched. “Though Dad wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

“No,” said Will, his face expressionless. “He’s such a sweetie – _ouch_!” He rubbed his ankle. “OK, OK, I’ll just go back to quietly making notes!” He glanced up at Percy, who grimaced in sympathy. “ _Ow_!”

“I saw that.” Nico looked back at Percy. “So, I’ve been asking everyone about their powers, and I want to know how yours work.”

“Well, they’re pretty awesome! I can –”

“Yeah.” Nico cut Percy off with a wave of his hand. “What I want to know is how it feels when you use them. _How_ does it come about?”

Percy bit his lip, thinking. “It – It feels amazing. Like I’m connected to everything. I can hear the sea – taste the water – really, I can’t think of any other way of describing it except that it’s like I’m part of it.”

Nico nodded. “I know what you mean. And you can breathe underwater, right?”

Percy nodded. “Just like normal. I don’t grow gills, or anything like that.”

“And you can talk to fish.”

“And horses!” replied Percy.

“Are they more interesting than fish?” chipped in Will.

Percy laughed. “ _Anything_ is more interesting than what fish think about.”

“And, generally, anything Poseidon can do, you can do to? Earthquakes, hurricanes, the lot?”

“Uh-huh.” Percy blushed. “But on a much smaller scale. I have to actually _be_ there.”

“So…?” Nico reached across and brought a glass of water into Percy’s line of vision.

Percy screwed up his eyes in concentration, and then shook his head. “Nothing.”

“But _I_ can…” mused Nico. “Hmm.”

“You’re connected to the shadows, I guess,” said Percy. “They go everywhere.” He started, and looked round –

“Who are you talking to?” floated a voice. Annabeth slid into the picture. Nico and Will waved. “Hi, you two,” she said. “What are you up to?”

“Finding out about Percy’s powers.”

“And how they’re exceptional,” said Percy, smugly.

“They’re not, actually,” said Will coolly, flipping back through a few sheets.

The other three looked at him, frowning. “This is _Percy_ ,” said Nico. “Even allowing for his ego, he’s just about the most –”

“Oh, no, not in terms of strength. But his powers, and the way he accesses them, all conform to the standard model – a kind of one-ness with whatever the parent god is, um, god of, but on a strictly localised level. And, actually, even the strength of his powers isn’t hard to account for: the fewer children a god has, the more powerful those children tend to be. And Percy has no demigod siblings in either form.” Will hesitated. “Yet.”

Percy blinked. “So, if my dad were to have more kids…?”

“You might get weaker. There are anomalies, though. Some demigods simply _are_ stronger than others. And it all depends on what the god has power over to start with. But, um, yeah. How those powers are distributed fits a fairly standardised model.”

Annabeth looked impressed. “Huh. What about gods with more abstract qualities?”

“Like Athena?” grinned Nico. He looked inquiringly at Will. “Well?”

Will pondered. “No idea.” He shrugged. And then yawned. “Which might be a project for another day.”

Percy nodded. “OK. I’ll call back at another time – the week-end, maybe?”

“Fine. But, like, in the day-time?” suggested Nico.

Percy grinned. “Will do!” He winked. “Sleep tight – _ouch!_ ” The connection dissolved with a scene of Percy being poked by Annabeth. Nico laughed lightly.

He turned over to hug Will more closely. “You were being clever, weren’t you?”

“It helps if you actually read the charts you make me compile…” sighed Will. He yawned again – longer this time. He shifted in the bed. “Now – out. This bed isn’t wide enough for the two of us to sleep here.”

“Especially not with your windmill arms,” said Nico. Kissing Will, he slipped over to the bed made-up opposite. It was close enough that they could reach out and touch each other.

“Night, night,” murmured Nico.

There was a sudden knock at the door. Will sat bolt upright, banging his head on the bunk above. “Yeah?” he said.

Chiron put his head around the door. “Just a routine inspection,” he said, looking round the room. Will rubbed his head and glanced guiltily across to the other bed. Nico, luckily, had melted away.

After Chiron had closed the door again, and Will laid his throbbing head back onto the pillow, he wondered idly if it had, somehow, been Percy. And if so, whether Nico would make him pay.


	13. Apples, Good. Cake? Better.

There was a curious sadness over the camp. No-one could put their finger on a cause, but there it was. They just felt sad.

Even Will, when he tried his usual smile on people, found that it didn’t come out right. It was like he was being sympathetic. Or pained. Nico, generally known for his dour attitude, managed to become even more subdued. Neither of them could must the energy to continue their work on the gods. They, like most of the rest of the remaining campers, just lolled around staring mournfully into space. Sometimes Will would read morose poetry. Sometimes, and this was worse, he’d read it aloud. Then they’d sit, and feel a little sadder. And yet no wiser.

There was crying, too. Campers would be sitting, quite normally, eating dinner, or halfheartedly practising sword-fighting, and then would spontaneously burst into tears.

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Chiron was going grey.

* * *

 

“Come on. Let’s go for a picnic.” Will tried to grin at Nico, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Why?” sighed Nico. “What’s the point?”

Will shrugged. “Does there need to be a point?” His face fell a little further. “Don’t you want to come?”

Nico felt guilty. He gripped Will’s hand. “Of course I do. If you’re there, I’m there. But – it _is_ February.”

“It’s not like that applies inside the camp. And it might do us some good. Shake off this…” Will paused. “Melancholy.”

“Mmm.” Nico stared around the room. “I’ll get a blanket. You get some food. Back in – oh, whenever, I guess.”

“Ready!” said Will holding up a rucksack.

“Oh. You’d prepared this?” asked Nico. His mouth twitched. “That’s nice.” He frowned. “It really is. I don’t get why I’m not happier about it.”

Will held open the cabin door for Nico. “I don’t know. It’s the same with me – and _I’m_ the one organising it! It’s, like, every time I start to feel happy about something, I feel really guilty about doing it. You know what I mean?”

Nico nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.” He sighed. “But why, though?” He sighed again. “Dunno.”

They turned into the woods. Nothing in there would touch Nico, so they were fine. Plus, they were all feeling pretty sorry for themselves, too. The two of them wandered along in subdued silence, gently swinging their linked hands back and forth.

“It’s not even directed at anything,” said Will suddenly.

“Huh?” said Nico, furrowing his brow.

“This, you know, sadness. Everything feels fine. You. Me. The flowers. There’s nothing wrong with any of it. But, underneath – sad.”

“Mmm. And hungry.”

Will looked at him. “Good point.” He twisted his head around. They were in a clearing, and a little distance away was a flat space of ground. Shrugging off the rucksack, Will then unzipped it, and chucked the blanket at Nico. Nico then spent ages getting it into _exactly_ the right place.

“Finished?” asked Will, hopefully.

“Uh…” Nico straightened one of the corners and patted it down. “Yes.”

“Fantastic.”

Will flopped dramtically down onto the blanket, intending to mess it up as much as possible, just to annoy him, Nico thought –

“ _Ow!”_ Will yelped, sitting up and rubbing his hip. He patted the blanket. “Tree root.”

“Serves you right, really, doesn’t it?” said Nico, placing himself carefully on the blanket. He hesitated, and then shook his head. “Nope. No smile coming from that, either. Hmm.” He rummaged in the bag. “Tuna or ham?”

* * *

 

“Apple.”

"Sugar?"

"No," said Will, holding out an apple.

“No.”

“Apple!”

“ _No_.”

Will threw it at him. Nico, instinctively, threw up his hands and caught it. “Eat it.”

Nico looked at it in distaste. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s good for you.” Will took out another one and bit into it. “Mmm…” he said, exaggerating his delight in it (and also spraying little bits of apple everywhere in a way which was, frankly, quite disgusting).

Nico raised an eyebrow. “Don’t do that.”

“You still have to eat it,” said Will, wiping his mouth. “Or –” (He clutched the bag to his chest) “– I won’t let you have any cake.”

Nico narrowed his eyes. “What kind?”

“Fudge.”

Nico’s eyes went round. “With –”

“With that icing you like. Yes. Like I did for your birthday. I thought it would cheer us up.”

“Then what’s the apple supposed to do…” Nico muttered sourly, but then grudgingly put the apple to his mouth.

Will relaxed his hold on the bag. “Good b –”

Nico lunged forwards to try and grab the bag. Will, though, was expecting him, and so tugged it out of the way. All that Nico succeeded in doing was knocking Will onto his back as he landed on top of him. As the breath was forced out of him, so was the pall of sadness. Will smiled. “How did I guess that you were going to –”

“Good afternoon, boys.”

“Is it?” said Nico, automatic, before looking up to see a woman standing in a clearing of the forest. She had an odd translucent quality, as if you were seeing more of her mind than her body. Nico wasn’t sure that that description made sense. It was more like –

“I believe you’ve met my husband?” She glanced between Nico and Will. “And found that he was right?”

Nico rolled off Will, blushing slightly. He stood up, straightening his appearance.

Will’s brow furrowed in confusion. It didn’t help that from his angle everything was upside down – and it only got worse when Nico bowed. He got to his feet. “Who – what –?”

“Psyche,” whispered Nico.

Will blinked, and gave a hurried bow. “But I still don’t get –”

“You remember me telling you about Cupid?”

Will’s brain rattled back. He stared sympathetically at Nico as he remembered. He stared at Psyche. He clapped a hand to his mouth. “Oh!”

She nodded. “My husband can be callous, but, despite all appearances, he’s not malicious.”

“Fooled me…” growled Nico.

“And what would have happened if he hadn’t forced you to that? Would you still be moping over Percy? Would you still be walling yourself away from everyone? You certainly wouldn’t be going on a picnic with your boyfriend.”

“Well – I don’t think – I mean, I could have – uh – maybe – I suppose I might – You can’t _know_ – It just wasn’t –”

“Nico?” said Will.

“Mmm?”

“Shut up.”

Nico folded his arms and glared at him.

Will ignored him, and looked instead at Psyche. “What’s the problem?”

Oh. The ‘Percy’ approach to talking to gods and goddesses, Nico thought. But, then, it was probably right to assume that, whenever one turned up, they wanted something.

“I’ve lost my children.”

Will felt a sudden rush of (even more) sadness, and patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. Are they demigods? Should they be at Camp?”

She shook her head. “No, my children with Cupid. Youth and Joy.”

Nico’s eyes widened. “So that’s why –”

“You feel sad all the time?” She nodded. “That’s right. It’s worse for those most intimately connected with the gods, but, given time, the sadness will seep into the mortal world, too. Also, people, particularly those whose lives have been extended, might begin to show their true ages.”

“Like Chiron!” exclaimed Will.

“And the gods…” Nico said, looking intently at Psyche. Yes, there were some wrinkles there.

Will blinked, and then snorted with laughter.

Nico and Psyche both looked at him like he was crazy. “What?” said Nico.

“Like _you_ , Death Boy.”

“Huh?” Nico started to stare in horror at himself. Were those freckles on his hands or liver spots? Had he been getting out of breath more? He put a hand to the back of his head, to check for bald patches –

“No need to be so paranoid, Nico.” Will leaned in to him, and dropped his voice. “You can hardly notice the grey hairs.”

“I’m really going grey?” Nico’s expression of wide-eyed despair was almost too much for Will to bear. Almost.

“Yeah,” lied Will. He looked back up at Psyche, who seemed pretty confused. “I’m guessing that you’re summoning us on a quest, then?”

She nodded.

Will glanced at Nico. The thought of a quest seemed to have cheered him up a bit. Will couldn’t really admit to feeling the same way, but, if it was going to solve this problem, then it would be OK.

“Where might we –” Nico started, and then stopped, speaking. Will looked around. Psyche was gone.

The pair of them shrugged.

“Goddesses. Never forthcoming with information,” sighed Nico.

“Prophecies are generally more useful,” agreed Will.

“Though always needlessly complicated.” Nico walked across the clearing, trying to see if Psyche had left anything “Do you think we ought to get one?” He turned back.

Will went to reply, but felt his jaw clench. Alarmed, he tried again, but by now his vision was blurring. Nico became a blotchy shape in the distance, as Will’s sight became flooded with a golden light.

Nico watched, worried, as Will started to sway from side to side. “Are you OK –” He started forwards, but as he did so, his boyfriend was already sliding, semi-conscious, to the ground, a dopey smile playing about his mouth. “Will!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh. Excitement!


	14. Nico Reads a Book

Will stared into a vast blaze of light, amorphous and constantly moving. It flashed in random places, as if there was something zooming about inside it. It filled the whole of his vision, and somehow, he felt totally warm and comfortable, as if wrapped up in something familiar. Will tried to blink at the dazzling brightness, but then realised that his eyes were closed, and he was, therefore, seeing all this inside his head. OK… There was bound to be a good reason for this, right? He wasn’t just having some kind of mental breakdown as all the nerves between his eyes and brain disintegrated –

“Hey.”

He knew that voice. And the casual arrogance that assumed that you could just take over somebody’s brain without asking, and that that would be totally OK. Will knew what he was going to say to that!

“Uh – hi, Dad.” Oh. Well, that hadn’t come out like he’d wanted it too. “Nice to see you.” Neither had that.

“So, Psyche’s sent you on a quest?”

“Yeah; you know about that already?”

“I’m a god.” The light pulsed in a way that seemed smug. “I know things.”

“So, er, can you give us a hand?”

“I can do better than that. I can give you a prophecy.”

Great. Nico would be delighted. “Are you _allowed_ to give prophecies?”

The light seemed to – blush? – dim a little. “W _ell…_ Kind-of.”

“How do you mean?”

“No big prophecies. And I can’t tell you much. But this would be more of a little prophecy. Your standard ‘ _Two will go forth…’_ job. A teeny-tiny prophecette. A prophecina. A ‘pr’, if you will.”

Will, had his disembodied consciousness had them, would have rolled his eyes. He just settled for sighing. (How could he do that? He didn’t have lungs. In fact, how could he speak? But enough of that. Things to get on with!) “So what is it?”

“Hmm. What rhymes with Psyche?”

“Spiky. Nike.” Will paused. “Acne.”

“Not much use. That’s really cleared up recently, hasn’t it?”

Will would have blushed. “Yes…” he muttered.

“Well, I’ve gone off poetry. I just think it’s all getting a bit stale. So I’ll tell you straight: there was a poet once who knew what he was talking about.”

Will waited. Nothing else happened.

“That was it? That wasn’t ‘straight’ at all!”

Will held his breath for the ‘neither are you’ he expected to follow. To his surprise, it didn’t come.

“I’m sorry, Will. I’m bound by a higher power. I’ve had to bypass the Oracle just to tell you that much.”

“Oh. Well, thanks, I guess.”

“No problem.  I’ll see you around…”

The light started to fade. A thought struck Will. Nico would definitely be interested. “If you don’t prophesy something, does it happen anyway?” he blurted out.

The light continued to dwindle.

“Dad?” Will waited, and then gave another sigh. Oh, well. “Love you…” He said, probably to himself.

 _Dark_.

* * *

 “My brain hurts…” groaned Will. He levered himself up and let himself be guided until his back rested against a tree. Nico was very close by.

“The shock of being used?” suggested Nico, with his mouth curling into a wry smile. That expression was competing with the expression of relief which was by now mostly covering up his earlier worried face.

“Yeah…” nodded Will (gingerly).“Like I was some kind of – I don’t know – _implement_.”

“That wasn’t what I meant…” murmured Nico.

“Not now, Nico,” said Will quietly, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples. “Ow…”

“What happened?” asked Nico.

“My dad,” muttered Will. “He wanted to give us a prophecy.”

Nico (as expected) groaned. “Yeah? What was it?”

“'There was a poet once who knew what he was talking about'.”

Nico blinked. “That’s _all_ we’re getting?”

Will shrugged. “He said that he wasn’t allowed to tell us any more. Even that was a bit of a risk, apparently.”

“Mmm,” muttered Nico darkly, “Zeus might take away his hair-straighteners.” He sighed. “At least it wasn’t in rhyme.”

“He’s gone off that, apparently.”

Nico put his hands together. “Thank gods. But he really couldn’t say any more than that?”

“He might have said ‘ _Two will go forth’_ as a hint, but, since Psyche came to speak to us, I guess we knew that already.”

Nico raised his eyebrows and let out a long breath. “See. Prophecies. Oh so useful. All we have to do is find some poem, somewhere, that is in some way useful. Great.”

“That’s it,” said Will.

“Hmph.” Nico’s expression softened. “How’s the head?”

Will wobbled it from side to side. A slight twinge, but at least he didn’t feel dizzy anymore. “Better.”

Nico kissed him on the forehead.

“Much better…” smiled Will.

Nico gave a little bark of laughter and then held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s get back to camp. You’ve got a poem to find.”

“Me?”

“You’re the one that likes reading. And isn’t dyslexic, so it’s quicker.”

“It might be a Greek poem,” pointed out Will.

“Then I’ll look through those, then.” Nico gestured with his hand. “Up!”

Will shook his head (and tried not to wince), then pointed at the discarded box by the rug. “We’ve still got that cake to finish.” He patted the ground next to him.

“Have we got time?” asked Nico. Will raised an eyebrow. Nico picked up the box. “They _are_ immortal, I guess. Plus, I wonder how long they’ve known about this.” He wrinkled his nose. “Was it just me, or did Psyche not really seem that upset?” He sat next to Will. “I mean, presumably Apollo knew it was going to happen. Did you ask –?”

“Yes,” said Will. He pulled a face. “No answer.”

“Hmm.” Nico opened the box. “I really like this cake…”

* * *

 

“A quest?”

“Uh-huh.” Nico glanced at Will, and then back at Chiron. “We even got a little prophecy from Apollo.”

Chiron blinked. “It’s a bit odd. Psyche just turned up and spoke to you?”

Will nodded. “She said something about Nico knowing her husband.”

Nico flushed. “That’s not important… Anyway, she wants us to find her children. That’s why we’re all so sad. And, apparently, ageing.”

Chiron sneaked a self-conscious look in the mirror at the end of the room. (So did Nico.) “Do you have any idea where you might start? Does the prophecy – not that you should tell me – help at all?”

“Not much,” admitted Will, “but I need to think about it.”

“Can we go?” asked Nico.

“You don’t know where, for how long, against whom, or even how to find out any of those answers.” Chiron sighed. “But you have to go. You’ve been chosen by the goddess; you’ll just have to muddle through.” He gripped their hands. “Take care.”

They nodded solemnly.

“You can leave – well, as soon as you work out where you’re leaving _to_.”

They nodded again, and got up. “Thanks, Chiron!”

As they left the room, Will asked Nico: “How _did_ you know Cupid?”

* * *

 

“It’s got to be something I’ve already got, right?” said Will, squinting at his bookshelf, his head on one side.

“Don’t bet on it,” said Nico, flipping through a copy of Hesiod. He looked up. “I mean, I can get anything you want, if you need me to.”

Will nodded. “Yeah. But if I knew _what_!” He drummed his fingers over the top of his books, and pulled one out at random. The _Four Quartets_. Probably not likely to be helpful. Or even half-way comprehensible. He flicked through it, running his eyes over the words. “ ‘We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know it for the first time.’ ”

“I hope _that’s_ not the one we’re looking for,” said Nico.

“I don’t think it is…” said Will, snapping the little book shut and sliding it back onto the shelf.

“Are there any poems, say, _about_ Psyche?” asked Nico.

Will’s brow furrowed. He brightened. “Yes!” He ran his hand along the shelf, stopping at a black-bound volume. He tugged it from its position. He waved it at Nico and smiled wryly. “ ‘Kates’.”

Nico scowled. “OK, make fun of the dyslexic… What’s it got in it?”

“ ‘O latest born and loveliest vision far / Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!’ .”

Nico raised his eyebrows at Will. “Did she _pay_ Keats to write that? I mean, yeah, she’s more than passably pretty, but…”

“Not my area,” quipped Will. He scanned the rest of the poem. He frowned. “Nothing here of much use. Just saying how she doesn’t have a temple, and that he’d make her one. Your typical needy goddess. And a besotted demigod.”

“Cupid wouldn’t have like that much,” said Nico.

Will set the book down on the table and sighed. “It was a good idea, Death Boy. But I guess it’s just going to be something else.”

Nico picked up the book and went through another couple of pages. He squinted. “Melancholy. That’s us. That’s everyone at camp.” His eye caught a familiar pattern on the page. He turned the book back to Will. “Does that say Psyche?”

“Er…” Will took hold of the book. “ ‘Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be / Your mournful Psyche’ ” He scanned down, raising his eyebrows. “Hey, Nico: ‘She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die; / And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips’ ” He beamed at Nico.

Nico frowned. “Who does? I don’t get it.”

“ ‘Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine.’ ”

“Oh! You mean – Melancholy took them?”

Will nodded. “Looks like it.”

“To do what?”

Will shrugged, and read to the end of the poem. “This, I guess: ‘...burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; / His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might / And be among her cloudy trophies hung.’ ”

Nico, despite himself, sniggered.

Will looked at him. “What?”

“ ‘Burst Joy’s grape’? That sounds a bit … dodgy.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Grow up.” He read over the poem again. “So, we need to go the temple of Delight. Well done, Nico.”

“I found it! What am I…?” preened Nico, angling for praise.

Will cupped his boyfriend’s face in his hands. “Very, very, _very_ –” He kissed him. “– lucky.”

Nico pouted. There was no helping it. Will just had to kiss him again.


	15. Taking a Walk

Nico poked his head around the door and rolled his eyes. “Are you _still_ getting ready?”

Will looked up from his rucksack. There were a lot of clothes scattered over his bed; the bag already looked over-full. He smiled sheepishly. “I can’t decide what to take with me.”

Nico shook his head, and went over to take the bag from Will. “What do you need all this stuff for?” He tipped everything out. “You can take these, these, this, that, and this.” Picking clothes at random, he folded them quickly and shoved them into the rucksack. “All the rest can go back.”

“But – but –”

Nico raised an eyebrow.

“They don’t even match!” protested Will.

“Who cares! It’s a quest, not a fashion show.” Nico scanned the rest of the bed. “And you can take the book – the medical kit – money – water – and –” He reached under a pile of t-shirts and sighed. “– your dagger.” He gave it to Will, who stuck it into his belt.

“Finished?” asked Will sulkily.

Nico swung the bag on a finger towards Will. “Yep.”

As Will fumblingly caught the bag, Nico gathered up Will’s mass of clothes and dumped them into the cupboard.

“Hey! Hey!” said Will. “They’ll get all crushed!”

Nico shrugged and stuck out his tongue. He looped his arm through Will’s and jammed a wide-brimmed hat onto his boyfriend’s head. “Onwards, Sunshine!”

“You’re weirdly enthusiastic today, aren’t you?”

“I just don’t want you to see me with wrinkles.” His lip curling up at the side, Nico pulled Will out into the camp.

* * *

 

Will had always imagined that leaving on a quest would be a big deal. It often had been in the past. But, then, those quests really _had_ been pretty important. And there had been more people in Camp. He had definitely not anticipated his quest starting off as, essentially, an arm-in-arm stroll along the road to the camp. It was like going on pick-up missions all over again.

“So, where exactly is the ‘Temple of Delight’?” he asked Nico.

Nico tipped his head from side to side. “No-one knows, exactly. You don’t know, apparently, until to you find it.”

“Does anyone know ‘roughly’?”

“Utah.”

“Utah?” said Will, incredulous.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” said Nico, shrugging.

“From whom?”

“From the dead.”

“Might have known…” muttered Will. “So – Utah. How do we get there, then?”

Nico grinned at Will. “I think you know how.”

Will’s eyes widened, and he tried to unlink his arm. “No! I won’t –”

The shadows closed around them, and, for a minute or so, they were spun through the darkness. Will squeezed his eyes shut, and felt Nico’s hand tighten reassuringly on his. Then they stopped moving, and, eyes still closed, Will toppled sideways, bringing a perfectly poised Nico down with him. Wincing in the dust, and avoiding Nico’s withering look, Will picked himself up.

“I really don’t like that,” he said.

Nico shrugged. “Tough.” He looked around. “So. Here we are.”

“In a desert. Is this where you meant for us to go?”

Nico flushed. “Sort-of…”

“You mean no.”

Nico bit his lip. “Well, I reckon, seeing as there’s no record of anyone ever finding it, it’s probably in the middle-of-nowhere, right? So, in a way, we’re exactly where we should be.”

“You just have no idea where ‘here’ is?”

“Maybe…” Nico looked sheepish. “But it’s definitely Utah.”

“Great.” Will fanned himself with his hat. “So, what do we do now? Are you going to take me through dozens of horrible mini shadow-hops until we find this place?”

Nico shook his head. “We’re going to have to walk.”

“Why?”

Nico gestured. “Look around! Do you see enough shadows for that?”

Nico was right. Apart from the rock that they’d landed by, everywhere was barren an in the full glare of the sun. “Great…” muttered Will, wishing he owned a pair of sturdier shoes. He could already feel the sand inside his trainers. “Which way, then, genius?”

Nico sucked at his teeth, pondering. “That way, until it gets dark. Then we’ll be able to shadow-travel again.”

Will adjusted the strap of his rucksack, sighed, and followed Nico.

“Are there any good children of Hades?”

“What?” said Nico, dragging his eyes away from the horizon.

“Are there any good children of Hades?” repeated Will.

“Um – _me_?” said Nico, a little affronted.

“Except _you_ , silly,” said Will, bumping him with his hip.

“Well – uh –” Nico frowned. “What are you counting as good? I mean, there are some really interesting –”

“Necromancers?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Spies?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Assassins?”

“Yeah… Not good?” asked Nico, raising an eyebrow.

“Not generally,” replied Will. He looked down at Nico. “Are you really the best that there is?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, _dear_ ,” said Nico. He pondered in silence for a while.

“Anything?” asked Will.

“Dante!” burst out Nico, slapping his forehead.

Will blinked. “Really? I’d have thought –”

“Apollo? You can’t have them all you know.” Nico looked away, his gaze unfocused. “Strange man. Only person to have gone through Tartarus quite happily. Taking _notes_.”

“But apart from that?”

“Not much good, no. It’s the power thing – the charisma. It’s very tempting. And people are easily tempted.”

“I know…” Will sprang away from Nico, his nose red. “Hey!”

“That’ll teach you,” said Nico smoothly, a grin pulling at his lips. “Now, does it look like we’re getting anywhere?”

Will looked around. “No. I can’t see anything that looks like a temple. Nor anything that really looks any different to anything we’ve walked past so far. It’s all just so monotonous.”

Nico squinted at the sun. It was almost tipping down to set. Their shadows were lengthening – but not enough. “Not long now, and then we can zip about all over the place.”

“What do you reckon it looks like?” asked Will.

Nico shrugged. “Your normal temple, I presume. Though there are bound to be monsters in the way – in fact, I’m quite surprised that we haven’t met any yet.”

“Then we must be going the wrong way,” said Will.

Nico looked sceptical. “Maybe. But it’s impossible to tell.”

“It could be one of those places that you only find when you’re really, really lost. Though, that begs the question: why haven’t we found it yet?”

Nico tipped his head to one side. “Are you saying we’re lost?”

“Well, do _you_ have any idea where we are?”

* * *

 Will rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. “Nico…” he groaned. “It’s one in the morning. We’ve been shadow-travelling around this desert for hours. I’m tired, I’m dusty, I’m tired, I feel quite nauseous – did I mention I’m tired? – I can’t feel my feet anymore, and I just really, really, _really_ want to go to bed!”

Nico looked across at a drooping Will. He did look pretty exhausted. “You’ve got enough energy to complain, though?”

Will moaned.

“Just kidding,” said Nico. “We’ll find somewhere to sleep. I can’t promise you anything good, though.”

“There must be somewhere round here…” said Will, stifling a yawn.

“We may have to take another couple of trips…” said Nico, stretching out his hand.

Will winced, and went, reluctantly, to take it, when he saw something in the light of the moon. “Wha’s that?” he slurred, pointing, and failing this time to stifle the yawn.

A few hundred yards away stood a neatly-painted building with a sign outside. It looked suspiciously welcoming.

Nico narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure we should… It’s a bit _convenient_ , isn’t it?”

Will shook his head. “That’s exactly what it is. Convenient. For us. Let’s go, Death Boy.”

“Fine. But it’s your funeral…”

“Not everything’s got a monster behind it, Nico,” said Will.

They neared the entrance. Nico paused by the sign. “What does this say, Will – Will?” His boyfriend had already walked through the door. With a slight gulp, and keeping his hand close to his sword, Nico followed him.

“Hello,” said Will, shambling up to the desk. “We’d like a room for the night. Yes, for the two of us. Yes, we are.” He slumped forwards. “If it’s a problem, could we please talk about it in the – in the – morning?” He yawned a couple more times.

“No problem…” said the man behind the desk, his eyes darting between the two of them. He adjusted his high collar. “You don’t even have to pay now. You can just get to bed.” He stood up (he was rather tall) and unhooked a key from the rack behind him. “Follow me.”

“This is an unusual place to have a hotel, isn’t it, Mr…?” asked Nico.

“Call me Rusty. Well, there are always people who need a bed, aren’t there?” The man stopped by a door. “Here you are.”

He opened it, and they went in. The room was dominated by an iron-framed bed. The sheets were brilliantly clean – almost as if no-one had ever slept in them – and Nico had to admit that it looked inviting.

As Will staggered towards the bed, shedding his rucksack, Nico noticed the man reach for something – something he’d dropped, maybe – and, in doing so, tip his head to one side, exposing a red line of scars around his neck. Nico’s eyes flicked from the man to the odd vine-like design on the head- and foot-boards of the bed. Something Percy had once told him flagged inside his head. His eyes snapped back to ‘Rusty’. He seemed taller now – and, more of a clue, was holding a bronze axe in his right hand.

Nico opened his mouth to warn Will –

It was too late. Will was already settling onto the bed, his head brushing against the metalwork.

The man grinned, and snapped his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeek!
> 
>  
> 
> Been a busy few days, sorry. Reviews are always welcome, and thanks to everyone who's left feedback in any form!


	16. Chapter 16

Nico rushed towards him.

Nothing happened. The man snapped his fingers again.

Still nothing. Will rubbed his eyes and raised an eyebrow. “I’m the right height, Procrustes. Exactly six feet tall.” He pulled the sheet around him.

Procrustes scowled and snapped his fingers for a third time.

“It’s no use,” said Will, his eyes still closed. “I knew this was your place. Percy Jackson – remember him? – told me about you. I read the sign outside. ‘Rusty’ is not a great improvement on ‘Crusty’, by the way. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m pretty tired, so bugger off. Sorry.”

Will opened one eye. “And you can stop waving that sword around and get into bed, Nico.”

“Can I not cut his head off? _Please…_ ” Nico pouted.

“No,” sighed Will, closing his eyes again. “It would get everywhere. Now, _in_.” Nico obeyed, suddenly feeling rather tired himself.

“Well, _he_ won’t be tall enough!” said Procrustes, readying his fingers again –

“No,” said Will. “You won’t be doing that. _I’m_ tall enough, so this is _my_ bed. And I can do with it what I like. Go away.”

Procrustes hung around for a few more moments, before slinking off, disappointed.

“I still think that you should have let me cut his head off,” grumbled Nico. “Will? Will?”

But Will was already snoring gently. 

* * *

Will sniffed, and sneezed.

He and Nico opened their eyes at the same time, Nico starting backwards, his eyes flicking around anxiously.

“Sorry…” mumbled Will. He glanced at Nico’s hair. “It’s you, I’m afraid.” He rubbed his hair, sending a shower of red dust over the pair of them. “And me.” He sneezed again; so did Nico.

“Yeah.” Nico blinked blearily. He cuddled in close to Will, burying his head in his chest. “This is much better,” he said, his voice muffled.

“Not from my perspective…” muttered Will, desperately trying to suppress yet another sneeze.

“Don’t care,” said Nico. He hummed contentedly into Will’s side.

Will sighed. “You smell funny.”

“Do I? Of what?”

Will sniffed. “Death.”

“And what does that smell like?”

Will thought. It was hard to describe. “Dry. Cold.”

“Those aren’t smells, Sunshine,” muttered Nico.

“Like lemons that have been kept in a fridge.”

“That’s just weird. How’s that a specific smell? How can someone smell like that?”

Will shrugged. “You do.”

“Fine.” Nico lifted his head. “You smell of sunshine and rainbows, by the way.”

“You’re being sarcastic aren’t you?”

“Well picked up. You actually smell like someone who’s walked across a desert and hasn’t changed his clothes.”

“Yeah, well, so do you. But _I_ can sniff past that.”

“Bully for you…” Nico rolled onto his back. “This conversation is stupid.”

“You’re just getting that now?”

Nico rubbed his eyes. “I’m hungry. D’you reckon they do breakfast here?” 

* * *

“Thanks, Rusty,” said Nico, piling some scrambled egg onto a bit of bacon.

“See,” said Will, “things are so much better if you don’t kill your guests.”

Procrustes glowered at them, thumping a rack of toast onto the table.

Will reached into his pocket and brought out a few drachmas. He stacked them on the table. Rusty’s eyes gleamed. Will put his hand out for the ketchup, and, totally accidentally, knocked the pile over, sending the coins scattering over the floor.

Procrustes bent immediately to gather them up.

A moment or so later, his separated head and body were dissolving, and Nico was wiping his sword on a tablecloth, and returning it to his hip.

Will buttered some toast, and crunched down on it. “And, this, Nico,” he said, gesturing to the breakfast table, “is why we didn’t kill him last night.”

“I admit, that _was_ a good plan.” Nico gathered up the coins from the floor. He popped back up again. “But I’m making a mental note not to get on the wrong side of you. You can be a cold, cold –”

Will suddenly squealed as some jam dripped onto his clean white t-shirt.

“– camp little fuss-pot,” finished Nico, raising an amused eyebrow as Will dabbed at his top with a napkin, making just the most adorable crushed-up face…

* * *

 

“Do you reckon meeting Procrustes means that we’re on the right track?” asked Will, kicking a stone along the ridge.

Nico bobbed his head. “I think so. Why else would he be there, if not to waylay people looking for something like the Temple of Delight?”

“Spite?” suggested Will.

“Not everyone’s like you, Sunshine.”

“What do you reckon it looks like?” asked Will.

Nico shrugged. “Your normal – hey, didn’t you ask this yesterday?”

Will thought. “Yeah. I did. Huh. Weird.”

“You’re losing it.”

Will grinned. “At least I had it to start with.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Careful, or you’ll regret something.”

“Like what?”

“Like going to all the trouble of changing your t-shirt, for a start.”

Will looked down. He was in blue now. He simply couldn’t bear wearing the stained top. He pulled a face. “But –”

“There’s no-one here!” exclaimed Nico.

“We’re looking for a goddess! And some minor gods. You’ve got to make a good impression.”

“Yeah, because it’s the crisp ironing that’s going to convince them to listen to us.”

“It’s all about the little things, Death Boy.” Will smirked. “And you should know.”

“And what’s that meant to mean?”

Will patted Nico on the top of his head. “Whatever you like, little one.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, while you’re exchanging starching-tips, I’ll be breaking the kids out of their chains and saving the day.”

“Yep. I can see that –”

“Woah!” called out Nico suddenly, grabbing the back of Will’s shirt.

Will stopped suddenly, and staggered backwards, away from the edge of the sudden drop. Will blinked and looked down the narrow chasm. It was about the width of five Wills. And the depth of rather a lot of Wills. Which was absolutely a reasonable measurement of distance. “Thanks…” he said, turning pale.

“Not a problem,” said Nico, dropping onto his stomach and peering down into the crevice. “What do you reckon is down there?” he mused.

“I can’t believe that it would be the temple,” said Will, squatting next to him. “There’s nowhere near enough space.”

“What if it was carved into the rock?” suggested Nico.

“Like Petra?”

“Uh-huh.”

Will pondered. “Could be. Not very Greek, though, surely?”

“Hmm. There are rock-cut tombs, but, I’ll admit, temples like that are rather … well, unprecedented. But maybe that’s why no-one has ever found it. Because it’s not what they think they’re looking for.”

“Hmm. So you reckon that we should have a look down there?”

“Worth a try, right?”

Will nodded. “Um. _How_?”

“Didn’t we just agree that?” said Nico, confused.

“No, how do we get down there?” replied Will. He looked around. “Still no shadows – hey, can you use our own shadows?”

Nico shook his head. “You can’t travel into your own shadow, because once you do, your shadow doesn’t exist anymore. So you’ve travelled into something that isn’t there. Not a good plan.”

“Ah. True. So – er – got a rope, or something?”

Nico tipped his head to one side. He peered into the gap. He stood up. “I’ve got an idea…”

“Yeah?”

Nico winced. “You’re not going to like it – _I’m_ not that keen on it…”

Will got to his feet, worried. “What is it?”

Nico bit his lip. “There are plenty of shadows down there.” He pointed into the ravine.

Will frowned. “Can you bring them up here?”

“Not as such…” mumbled Nico. “But, uh, we, um, could go to them…”

Nico waited as the thoughts settled into Will’s head. Will went very white. “No. No. Nononononono! That’s insane!”

“It’ll be fine!” Nico said, trying to sound confident. “I can do it. I think.”

“I’m not jumping in there based on your ‘I think’!” Will backed away from the edge. “There has to be another way down.”

“I don’t think there is.” Nico took Will’s hand. “Come on. You can trust me.”

“Yeah, but do you trust yourself?”

Will watched Nico’s lip wobble. “I will if you will, Will,” he said in a small voice.

“Well, if you put it like that…” muttered Will. He sighed, and raised his eyebrows. “OK. I, _Will_ , will.”

Nico’s mouth twitched up at the side. “Thanks.” He led him to the edge. “Ready?”

Will blanched. If it were possible to have paled any further he would have actually started to fade away. “Um – I have to say – can I take back what I just said? I – I didn’t really – um – mean to – I don’t think – I wasn’t thinking – Nico, it’s not that I – um – Nico – I –” Will trailed off into silence. He stared at Nico, his eyes wide with fear. “Please don’t make me do this…” he whispered.

Nico bit his lip. “Do you trust – no, do you _love_ me?”

Will nodded.

“Now, are you going to make me emotionally blackmail you into doing this?”

Will hesitated, and then shook his head. He glanced towards the crevasse. “If we end up as a pair of gristly pancakes at the bottom, I’ll – I’ll –”

“Do what?”

“I’ll flirt with all the guys in the Underworld. And there’ll be nothing you can do to stop it.”

“Want a bet?” asked Nico, grinning.

Will rolled his eyes. “Let’s get this over with.” He gripped Nico’s hand tightly, at the same time feeling his chest tighten around his ribs. He felt sick. This was a stupid thing to do. To just step off the edge with nothing but Nico to hold on to. Well, it’s not like there was anyone he’d rather hold on to.

With a shared nod and squeeze of fingers, they stepped into the air, and dropped down towards the orange rocks beneath.


	17. Embarrassing Yourself

They zapped out of the shadows at the bottom of the gulf. Will, much less used to shadow-travel, was unable to counter his continuing him momentum, and so fell over, bouncing off a rock.

“Ouch.”

“No sympathy,” murmured Nico, looking up. He’d been right. Carved into the rock face were a series of elaborate tunnel entrances, with bas-relief columns, scrolls, and geometric patterns. It was like someone had taken a Greek temple and then slammed it into a wall. Maybe someone had…

“Wow,” said Will, staring at the cliff. “Just … wow!”

“I can see why they say Apollo’s children have a way with words.”

“I’ll have a _word_ with you, if you’re not careful,” retorted Will. He hesitated. “Thanks, by the way.”

Nico shrugged. “I knew I could do it.”

Will raised an eyebrow.

Nico hung his head. “Well, I as _pretty_ sure I could do it…”

“Doesn’t matter now…” said Will. He peered across the gloomy floor of the ravine, through the dusty light. “Are those stairs?”

Nico looked where Will pointed. “I think so. Up to the middle door.”

“Ready?”

“Uh-huh.”

The pair went to the bottom of the steps. They looked pretty steep, and the entrance was quite a way up. Will gave Nico a sidelong, slightly hopeful look. Nico rolled his eyes.

“Lazy git. You don’t mind it now, eh?” Smiling and shaking his head, Nico willed the shadows to close around them. 

* * *

 

“I’m not quite sure what’s so _delight_ ful about it…” commented Will, gazing around at the huge bare temple. “It’s like any Greek temple. Nice, in a kind of classical way.”

Nico looked up. “How do you reckon it’s lit? I mean, it’s like day in here, and we’re definitely a long way down.”

Will ran a hand over the stone. “I think… I think it glows on its own.” He twisted around. “And _everything_ does – so no shadows.”

Nico nodded. “Except at the door, where it meets the outside. Hmm. Pretty empty in here, isn’t it?”

“Not even a frieze on the wall,” agreed Will. He pointed towards a plain white block built into the far wall. “There’s an altar down there.”

They walked towards it, their steps echoing in the space of the room. Nico kept looking nervously around and fingering the hilt of his sword. “Someone must be able to hear us,” he murmured to Will.

“Good,” said Will, as they reached the altar, “we’re looking for someone.” He bent his head politely towards the altar, and then turned around. “But nobody’s coming. Hmm.”

Nico opened his mouth to say something, and –

“ _Hello_!” called out Will.

Nico clamped his hand over Will’s mouth. “Shh!” he hissed.

Will struggled to get free. It was no good. Nico’s grip was just too strong. So he decided to kiss the palm of Nico’s hand instead. Really watery, tonguey snogs.

“Euurgh!” whined Nico, wrenching his hand away and wiping it spasmodically on his trousers. “Yuck!”

“As I was trying to say,” said Will, his voice low, “we want to draw attention to ourselves. This is not a sneaky operation.”

“Why not?” said back Nico sharply. “We could have just scouted around, found the kids, and left, without even letting anyone know we were here. What’s your plan? Summon a goddess and challenge her to fight?”

“No! Negotiate, Nico! There must be some reason for all this – if we don’t resolve it, then this’ll just keep happening. Do you think they wouldn’t get kidnapped at all?”

“But –” protested Nico.

“But nothing. You’ve got to treat the disease, not the symptoms.”

Nico narrowed his eyes. “Oh, don’t start with that condescending stuff. I’ve been on loads more quests, and I know that –”

There was a cough to their left. They turned. A tall woman was standing watching them. Nico suddenly realised that he’d been on the verge of shouting that last part. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Will smile slightly, and realised that Will had intended him to get angry all along. Oh, that boy! At times, Nico really could – could – Huh. Nothing, really. He zoned back in as the goddess spoke:

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Oh – um – er – Are you Melancholy?” asked Will.

“Yes. Though _that_ is the altar of Delight. My shrine is over there.” She inclined her head towards a veiled-off chamber from the main hall, and then led them towards it. “What do you want from me?”

“Cupid and Psyche’s children: Youth and Joy,” said Nico. He glanced nervously across at Will and shrugged slightly. Best to be direct.

Melancholy frowned. Nico and Will felt sad inside. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Will tried to shake off the dull weight. “Yes, you do! ‘She – ( _You_ ) – dwells … With Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips.’ So where is he? And his sister?”

The goddess sighed, and her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know. He usually _does_ live here, at least some of the time.” She gestured towards an alcove with a bed in it. “But he just disappeared one day.”

“ _Disappeared_?” asked Nico, his brow furrowing. “When?”

She looked thoughtful. “A week ago?”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” said Will.

Melancholy blinked. “But I did. When he’d been gone for three – did you say his _sister_? Is she missing too?”

Will nodded. “Yeah… You really didn’t know that?” He narrowed his eyes.

“I didn’t.”

Nico watched her carefully. He didn’t think she was lying. “Who did you tell when you realised he was gone?”

“His mother, of course,” she said. She raised her head, angry. “ _I_ reported it – and you two come here to accuse me?”

“Um – not accuse, no – er – um –” said Will, flustered “– rather, uh, to try and, um –”

“Yes,” said Nico. “We did.” He looked a little embarrassed.

“Who sent you?”

“Psyche.”

“Psyche sent you after _me_?” Melancholy looked really hurt. “She thought it was me? Why would she do that?”

“Well, um, no…” said Will, flushing. He was starting to think that he’d interpreted his dad’s advice really badly. “She didn’t really tell us anything apart from that Joy and Youth and disappeared, and that we had to find them again. We came up with the rest. We didn’t know that he was normally here. Uh. We – I – guessed that you and Joy would have been enemies, or something. Sorry.”

Melancholy shook her head. “You were mistaken.”

Will looked down at the ground. He heard Nico say something, but he wasn’t paying attention. He’d been so _certain_. But now he looked at it, the whole thing seemed to unravel. He’d based it all on _what_? A cryptic phrase from his dad, and then a couple of lines from the first thing he properly looked at? That was all. His grand plan. Didn’t look quite so grand anymore. His first quest and he’d completely buggered it up.

He barely noticed as Nico took him by the hand and led him out of the temple and down the stairs; it was only the sudden darkness of the bottom of the ravine that shocked him back to his senses. Will broke apart from Nico and lashed out with a foot at a boulder. “How could I have been so stupid?” he growled. He winced, and rubbed his toes. “Ow…”

“Will –” began Nico, going towards him.

Turning away, Will flopped to the ground, burying his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, Nico,” he moaned. “I’ve wasted so much time in this. Time we could have used better – time we – _you_ – don’t have – time –” He pummelled the dirt futilely with his hands. “I’m such a fool.”

Nico sat down next to him. “Hey.” He put his arm around him. “I thought it was right too, so I’m as much of a fool as you. So that makes two of us.”

“Does that make us about the same level as a normal person, or twice as stupid?”

“No comment,” said Nico.

Will gave a weak smile at that, and then dropped his eyes again. “I don’t know what to do now, Nico.”

“Well, it’s not all on you, you know. You’re not actually responsible for everything that happens.”

Will didn’t say anything, but he seemed to be being silent in a less self-pitying way.

“Besides, it wasn’t that bad an idea. It certainly _feels_ like they should be antagonistic. We weren’t to know. We simply weren’t told that. Even Chiron agreed.” Nico frowned. “We weren’t really told anything. Come to think of it, why didn’t Psyche stick around to tell us how she knew that they were gone? To tell us who told her? Where they’d disappeared from?”

“All good questions…” muttered Will, lifting his head. He sighed. “Ones we should have asked.”

“Who would we have asked?” said Nico. “It’s not like the gods were being very forward with information. In fact, Psyche didn’t even seem that concerned about them. Which was odd.”

“I’m sure she was upset,” said Will. “But, I mean, she’s a goddess. She wasn’t going to show us how upset she was.”

“Maybe.” Nico couldn’t help feeling unconvinced. “But, I suppose that there was some good of it.”

“What?” asked Will. “I don’t get it. How was this anything other than a complete waste –”

“Hey, hey, leave off with the moping for a minute or two, OK? One: we know it isn’t Melancholy. I mean, she could have been lying to us, but I don’t think so.”

Will grunted, not much mollified.

 “ _And_ , two: while you were staring at your shoes, Melancholy and I had a little chat about where Joy usually goes when he’s not in the Temple; Youth, too.”

“So you’ve got an idea where to go next?” asked Will.

Nico nodded. “Provided you’ve got over your bruised ego?”

Will bit his lip. “It _is_ a little sore, still.” He fluttered his eyelashes. “Would you kiss it better?”

Nico laughed and slipped his arm through Will’s. “I’m not sure I know where to start.”

“Oh, anywhere will do,” said Will airily.

Nico snorted, and then kissed Will on the mouth. As he did so, he tugged the pair of them into the shadows.


End file.
